658 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



in the collection presented by Mrs. E. Y. Bell. The designs are 

 highly conventionalized and have several layers of cut and insert 

 applique work (pi. 34). 



The Mexican tribes are represented in the Museum collections by 

 articles of dress, by sashes, satchels, and serape blankets ; the Central 

 American or Mayan Tribes by fabrics in which the old geometric 

 conventional designs of mythological character are iDreservecl. South 

 America furnishes excellent examples of the native art, ancient and 

 modern. The burial places of Peru yield textiles of almost unrivaled 

 artistic excellence. The sleeved shirt in openwork pattern and the 

 sleeveless garment in Gobelin style, ornamented with great numbers 

 of conventionalized bird forms, are typical objects of dress, while 

 the fragment of a crimson mantle is a marvel of textile construction. 

 The body of this mantle is made up of hundreds of separate disks, 

 into which are woven human features, and from the centers hang 

 clusters of minute tassels, the round head of each imitating the human 

 face, while the border is a fringe of tassels of varying size in most 

 tasteful arrangement. Other examples of Peruvian textiles have con- 

 ventionalized birds and animals as the usual decorative motives. 



Although skillful weavers of cotton cloth, the Arawak Indians of 

 the West Indies possessed but scanty clothing. AVomen wore a short 

 skirt of woven cotton fabric after marriage, but the unmarried girls 

 went naked. In the culturally more advanced districts of Haiti there 

 was a distinction in the type of women's skirts according to the rank 

 of the wearer. A typical garment reached from the waist to the mid- 

 thigh, while the skirts of women of importance extended to the ankle. 

 Among the Lucayans of the Bahamas and the natives of Porto Rico 

 and Cuba the male population went entirely nude. Body painting 

 was resorted to in the absence of clothing. Puberty was celebrated 

 with a feast, after which girls wore a small net filled with leaves and 

 attached to the waist. Both sexes wore ornamental cotton bandages 

 on upper arms, below the knees, and at the ankle. Similar orna- 

 ments were worn in Jamaica and are still the fashion among the 

 Indians of southeastern Panama. Ferdinand Columbus, writing of 

 the Carib on the island of Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles, refers 

 to the same custom as being practiced there. The presence of these 

 bandages is indicated on wooden zemis (wooden idols) in the National 

 Museum from Santo Domingo. Ferdinand Columbus also states that 

 in one hut on the island of Cuba over 12,000 pounds of cotton was 

 found in the native dwellings, together with a new variety of loom 

 on which it was woven. This loom was possibly of the Central 

 American or Mayan type as contrasted with the regular South 

 American Arawak type. 



