NO. 2042. ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS— BUSHNELL. 



663 



made materials, A remarkable example is reproduced in plate 55c. 

 The threads forming this piece were probably spun of the wool of 

 the buffalo, an art practiced by various tribes,' and it is evident the 

 work of the women of the Kaskaskia was not surpassed by any. 



Durmg the autumn of 1721, some 18 years after the removal of 

 the Kaskaskia from their villages on the bank of the Illinois, Pere 

 de Charlevoix reached their new towns near the mouth of the Kas- 

 kaskia, on the eastern side of the Mississippi, a short distance from 

 the Saline. He was impressed with the skill of the women, and 

 wrote: "Their women are very neat-handed and industrious. They 

 spin the wool of the buffaloe, which they make as fine as that of the 

 English sheep; nay sometimes it might even be mistaken for sUk. 

 Of this they manufacture stuffs which are dyed black, yellow, or a 

 deep red . Of these stuffs they make robes 

 which they sew with thread made of the 

 sinews of the roe-buck." ^ The piece of 

 fabric which was impressed on the frag- 

 ment of pottery already mentioned would 

 be worthy of this description. The pecul- 

 iar weave represented by this fragment 

 has been met with in other parts of the 

 Mississippi Valley and has been fully de- 

 scribed.^ Other examples were discov- 

 ered near the Saline in which the warp 

 threads were as much as 1 inch apart; 

 the threads were tightly twisted and the 

 work neatly executed. Figure 8 rep- 

 resents a fabric impressed upon a 

 small piece of pottery found near the spring. The fragment is very 

 small and the entire impression is shown exact size. This is of 

 special interest, as it shows two designs on the same piece of cloth. 

 For the sake of comparison a section of a buffalo hair bag in the 

 Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford, is shown in plate 56 a, while h repre- 

 sents a cloth derived from a fragment of earthenware from the 

 Saline. It is quite evident the impres3ion on h was made by a fabric 

 similar to a. Both are enlarged one-half. 



An unusually interesting example is reproduced in plate 57 a. 

 This shows two pieces of fabric neatly joined and impressed upon 

 the surface of a large vessel. The specimen was probably not less 

 than 30 inches in diameter. The fragment, which is a portion of 



Fig. 8— Imprint on a feagment of pot- 

 tery. Exact size. 



1 Bushnell, D. I., jr., The Various Uses of Bufialo Hair by the North American Indians, in Amer. Anthr., 

 vol. n, p. 401. 



2 de Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North America, London, 1761, vol. 2, p. 222. 



3 Holmes, W. H., (A) Prehistoric Textile Fabrics . . . derived from Impressions on Pottery, in Third 

 Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., pp. 393-425. (B) Prehistoric Textile Art of the Eastern United States, in Thir- 

 teenth Ann. Rep. Bm'. Ethn., pp. 9-46. 



