318 bushnell: textiles from ozark caves 



ANTHROPOLOGY. — Fragmentary textiles from Ozark caves. 

 David I. Bushnell, Jr., Bureau of Ethnology, 



Throughout the Ozarks, from the banks of the Mississippi to 

 the western foothills, and through the northwestern part of 

 Arkansas, caves and smaller rock shelters are to be found in the 

 cliffs bordering the numerous streams as well as in the adjacent 

 valleys. These, with few exceptions, show evidence of long 

 occupancy by Indians. Masses of wood ashes and charcoal, 

 intermingled with fragmentary pottery, some objects of bone 

 and stone, bones of animals, shells, etc., have accumulated near 

 the openings of the caverns, but nothing has been discovered to 

 indicate great antiquity. Many caves within this area have 

 been partially excavated, but unfortunately no complete de- 

 scription of the contents of any one has been published. 



It is reasonable to suppose that various pieces of basketry, 

 cloths, and other textiles, all of a perishable nature, have at 

 different times been recovered from masses of ashes in the dry 

 caves, but only two such discoveries can be traced, one in Mc- 

 Donald County, Missouri, the other in Benton County, Arkansas, 

 adjoining it on the south. The specimens are in the United 

 States National Museum and are now described for the first time. 



The cave in McDonald County, ^ in which the specimens were 

 found, is described as being ''in the valley of Little Sugar Creek," 

 in the southern part of the county not far from the Arkansas 

 line. Little Sugar Creek is about forty miles west of James 

 River, formerly known as the Great North Fork of White, down 

 which valley Schoolcraft passed during the autumn of 1818 and 

 there "saw many of the deserted pole camps of the Osages, none 

 of which appeared, however, to have been recently occupied,"" 

 This was the hunting ground of the Osage as it had been for many 

 generations, and for this reason the greater part of the material 

 met with in the caves should undoubtedly be considered as being 



1 This was evidently the cave later partially examined by C. Peabody and W. 

 K. Moorehead and briefly described by them in Bulletin I, Dept. of Arch., Phillips 

 Academy, Andover, Mass., 1904. 



2 Schoolcraft, H. R-., The Indian in his wigwam. Buffalo, 1848, p. 62. 



