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44 PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM: 
When properly dried, each stalk is split open and the shive or woody 
part broken by the hand and peeled off from the outside skin or fiber. 
This fiberis 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 process of rotting the 
plant and breaking it to get rid of the shive, or of the process of hack- 
ling the fiber, and as their method is so slow and laborious, they are 
abandoning the use of the nettle as a textile plant, and use twine, which 
they either purchase 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. d 
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 Chinook indians 
at the mouth of the Columbia River. 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 numbers 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 emanated from them. 
J 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 water. 
