384 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



sissippi Valle}^, where imprints of the interlaced canes occur in the 

 baked clay plaster with which the dwellings were finished. In the 

 same connection eTohn Smith, Butel-Dumont, Du Pratz, Latitaa, and 

 John Lawson arc quoted on the use of wattling for houses, inclosure, 

 biers, and burial platforms. A fish trap with long wings done in 

 twined wattling is figured in Hariot and here reproduced from Holmes. 

 (See tig. 120.) 



The illustration shows a warp of stakes driven into the bottom of 

 the stream close enough together to let the small fry pass through 

 and to offer no impediment to the liow of water. Brush or poles con- 

 stitute the warp. The rivers of the Atlantic coast teemed with shad, 

 herring, rocklish, sturgeon, and more, in the spring, and it is per- 

 mitted to infer that twined fish traps were universal there. 



Plate 130, thanks to the preserving care of potsherds, introduces the 

 reader to the old basket makers of no one knows how many centuries 

 ago. From three fragments, selected out of myriads and shown in 

 the plate on the right hand, the casts on the left being in plaster, one 

 might think himself studying specimens from the Aleutian Islands or 

 the Great Interior Basin. The figure at the bottom is in plain open- 

 work of twined weaving, the material being a soft bast, perhaps of 

 native hemp. Hundreds of wallets indistinguishable in texture from 

 this are now brought from around Bristol Bay, Alaska. The figure 

 in the middle is openwork twined weaving in diagonal pattern. The 

 warp strands are in pairs and flexible, making the interstices triangu- 

 lar and giving to the weaving the appearance of '"'fagoting." If 

 the weft were forced close together, the texture would be the common 

 twilled work of the Pacific slope. The upper figures are also twined, 

 but of rarer st3de, the warp being set diagonally. This figure is 

 worthy of note in two respects. The workmanship in twisting of the 

 threads is superb. One would have to look a long time through a col- 

 lection of twined weaving of the present da}- to see threads near so 

 fine. Not until the outermost island of the Aleutian chain was reached 

 would the specimen appear. The other characteristic is the sloping 

 warp, a thing of rare occurrence in twined weaving. 



A further glance at basketry technic preserved in impressions on 

 pottery and in caves shows plain twined weave, open or closed, with 

 vertical or oblique warp; twilled weaving in twined weft and twined 

 weaving with zigzag warp; three-ply twined weaving, and a style of 

 twined work, which for exhausting possibilities of variety in warp 

 treatment will vie with any modern example. The material is good 

 twine, the warp is administered in groups of sixes, oblique toward the 

 right. The weft is a two-ply twine which in crossing the warp takes 

 in a strand at each half turn and is twisted tightly in the open spaces. 

 The pattern is varied by bands of close weft in three rows, above and 

 below which the groups of six warp strands are split into threes. 



