340 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



boat which they call " cora," woven so ti^ht as to be waterproof 

 without the aid of pitch or other application. And upon the .same 

 parallel of latitude, along the Gulf of Mexico, the Indians used to 

 cross the rivers on floats of cane woven together and called "cajen." 

 Bundles of cane were laid together sidewise, and over them others, 

 the whole being woven together.'^' 



Formerly mats were used by the Makah as canoe sails, but at 

 present the}' are employed for wrapping up blankets, for protecting 

 the cargoes in canoes, and for sale to the whites, who use them as linirg 

 of rooms, or as floor coverings (James G. Swan). 



Besides the endless carrying of things among the Indians, called 



transportation, there is, it must 

 not be forgotten, a large amount 

 of passenger movement. The 

 cradle, or, more correctly, the 

 papoose basket, was the beginning 

 of devices for carrying persons. 

 Except a little riding by people 

 of note on the backs of men in the 

 Andes, only infants were passen- 

 gers in aboriginal days through- 

 out America. 



For the infant there were three 

 zones of going about in the West- 

 ern Hemisphere, the Arctic, the 

 Temperate, and the Tropical; 

 speaking technically, the zone of 

 the fur hood, the zone of the car- 

 rying frame, and the zone of free 

 motion. The Atlantic province 

 tribes made use of flat boards or 

 racks, the Eskimo mother carried 

 her babe safely ensconced in her 

 ample hood of fur. The cradle 

 of southeastern Alaska and the 

 mainland near by were troughs, but most of the Pacific tribes made 

 their papoose frames of basketr}^, and it is to these that attention is 

 invited. In nearly all of them the feet and head are left free.^ The 

 Hupa Indians, on the Hupa Reservation, in northwestern California, 

 belong to the Athapascan family in Alaska and northwestern Canada, 

 and that may account for the resemblance of their cradles in form 

 to those of birch bark made by the tribes of that northern region. 



aDu Pratz, History of Louisiana, London, 1763, II, pp. 228-229. Dumont also 

 mentions rafts of poles and canes. 



(> O. T. Mason, Primitive Travel and Transportation. Report of the U. S. National 

 Museum, 1894, p. 521. 



Fig. 107. 



twined cradle. 



Hupa Indians. 



Cat. No. 126519, U.S.N.M. Collected by P. H. Ray, U. S. A. 



