376 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



g'lng the inner bark of the 3'oung' sprouts of basswood is emploj'ed. 

 It is removed in sheets and boiled in water with a quantity of lye. 

 This softens the liber and prepares foi; the next process, which con- 

 sists in pulling bunches of the boiled bark forward and backward 

 throug-h a hole in the shoulder blade of the deer. The 

 liber is twisted into yarn and made into cord or twine 

 by winding- on the thigh with the palm of the hand. 

 This advance in the preparation of the textile elements 

 paves the way for twined weaving. 



Fig-. 1, Plate 123, is an example of hexagonal weaving 

 in a Mackenzie River snowshoe in which 

 the vertical elements answering to warps 

 are crossed and not interlaced, and the 

 fabric is bound together by the weaving 

 in and out of a single rawhide thong. Fig. 

 2, on the same plate, illustrates the next 

 step in this weaving, and is suggestive of 

 a feature in the twilled basketrv taken from 

 graves in a cemetery at Ancon, Peru, 

 namely, the method by which a bar of the 

 snowshoe frame enters into the weaving and 

 widens the meshes. Most beautiful eti'ects 

 are produced on the surface of these snow- 

 shoes by the diti'erent methods of adminis- 

 tering the warp. This has l)een carefully 

 worked out ))y John Murdoch in his paper upon the 

 Eskimo of Point Barrow, Alaska," and is referred to 

 here simply to show how the metliods of weaving in 

 basketr}- are to be seen in other materials for other 

 purposes. 



In fig. 8, same plate, the warps at certain points in 

 the manipulation are twisted in pairs about each other, a 

 technical process in vogue throughout middle America, 

 beginning as far north as the Mohave country in south- 

 ern Arizona. It might be called the first step in lace 

 making. Fig. 4, same plate, introduces another element 

 of complexity wherein the warp elements instead of being- 

 twisted around each other are wrapped once or twice 

 about the weft, so that th(> primitive lace work is efl'eeted 

 both vertically and horizontally. 



Charles C. Willoughby, of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massa- 

 chusetts, is of the opinion that coiled basketry was used among the 

 Ojibwa Indians (Chippewa) on the Great Lakes before contact with the 



Fig. 111. 

 wooden mallet 



FOR LOOSEN I N<i 

 SPLINTS. 



fe" 



Fig. 112. 

 basket- .m.\kek's 

 knife of na- 

 tive work- 

 MANSHIP. 



"Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1892, pp. 342-352. 



