44 PROCEEDINGS OF UNIPED STATES NATIONAL MUSELxM. 



\'\Tieu properly dried, eacli stalk is split open and the shivc or woody 

 part broken by the band and peeled oft' from the outside skin or fiber. 

 This fiber is then spun or twisted into threads or twine, by rolling be- 

 tween the palm of the hand and the bare leg, a process at which the 

 women are very expert. 



The Indians at present know nothing of the i:)rocess of rotting the 

 plant and breakiug it to get rid of the shivCj or of the process of hack- 

 ling the fiber, and as their method is so slov/ and laborious, they are 

 abandoning the use of the nettle as a textile plant, and nse twine, which 

 they either jiurchase ready made, or manufacture from cotton threads 

 raveled out from flour-sacks and spun by hand, or from jute, which 

 they procure from old gunny-bags which have been thrown away by 

 the whites. 



I think if they could be taught the process of rotting the nettle and 

 preparing the fiber as the farmers of Kentucky prepare hemp or flax, 

 that they would soon be able to furnish a valuable article of commerce 

 which would pay them well for their labor. 



The net I send will show the twine made by this most primitive of all 

 methods, and indicate the many purposes for which it may be made 

 available, but in order to be profitable it should be prepared in quan- 

 tities like flax, or hemp, which it greatly resembles. 



The net stitch or knot for making the mesh was not taught them by 

 white men, but has been known by the coast Indians for ages. 



Nearly thirty years ago I saw the salmon-nets of the Chiuook Indian^ 

 at the mouth of the Columbia Eiver. The knowledge and use of nets 

 antedates the advent of the first white man, but in the manufacture of 

 the fiber and the twine they seem to have retained the most primitive 

 ideas, and never have advanced. What little twine they now manufact- 

 ure is made exclusively by the old women. 



The peculiar shape of the net, and the curved handle, are to enable 

 Indians to best use them in the surf. A straight handle could not be 

 used. 



The surf-smelt are usually most plentiful during the month of Au- 

 gust, and come in such vast number* that the water seems to be filled 

 with them. Captain Carroll, of the steamer Alexander Duncan, plying 

 between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, informed me that, on 

 the 24th of August, while on his passage from Astoria to Neeah Bay, he 

 ran through a school of smelts between Point Grenville and Quillehute 

 which extended nearly forty miles, and at night their track was made 

 visible by a bright phosphorescent light which enmnated liom them. 

 I noticed the same luminous appearance in the surf in Quillehute Cove 

 during each night that I remained there. 



The smelts come in with the flood tide, and when a wave breaks on 

 the beach they crowd up into the very foam, and as the surf recedes 

 many will be seen flapping on the sand and shingle, but invariably re- 

 turning with the undertow to deeper vrater. 



