ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 7 



The meshes are usually quite open, knotting and other methods 

 of fixing the threads and spaces having been resorted to. 



The combinations of threads are much varied and are of such a 

 character as to make it quite certain that the weaving was done by 

 hand, the threads of the web and woof being attached to or wound 

 about pins fixed in a frame or upon the ground. 



Specimens of the pottery and casts therefrom were shown and 

 black board analyses of the fabrics were given. 



DISCUSSION. 



Prof. Mason inquired of Mr. Holmes whether he gave technical 

 names to the various forms, to which Mr. Holmes replied that he 

 found that impossible. 



Major Powell said the paper that had just been read by Mr. 

 Holmes is of exceeding interest to all students of North American 

 archaeology ; first, from the fact that his methods of research are 

 unique; and, second, that the results of his investigations throw much 

 light upon the status of culture reached by the people who con- 

 structed the mounds and other burial places found so widely dis- 

 tributed thoughout the eastern portion of the United States. The 

 research sheds light both upon the textile and ceramic arts of these 

 people, and in both departments they are shown to have been in no 

 respect superior to the Indian tribes first discovered on the advent 

 of the white man to this continent. 



It is interesting to notice, in this connection, that the early publi- 

 cations in relation to the mounds and mound-builders of the valley 

 of the Mississippi represent these people as having passed into a 

 much higher culture than the North American Indians at large, 

 and much has been written concerning a civilized people inhabit- 

 ing this country anterior to its occupation by the Indians. In 

 the light of the research which has been prosecuted during the past 

 years in various quarters and by various persons, the manufactured 

 evidence of the existence of such a people is rapidly vanishing, and 

 this from many points of study. It is shown by a careful examina- 

 tion of the early travels in this country, and accounts of missionaries 

 and various historic records, that some of the early tribes discovered 

 were themselves mound-builders. This is clearly shown in the late 

 publication of Mr. Lucien Carr, Peabody Museum, and by the re- 

 searches of Professor Thomas, of the Bureau of Ethnology. The 



