310 Canadian Textile Substances. 



Notes respecting certain Textile Substances 

 m use among the North American Indians, 

 bi/ W. Green, Esqr. 



The Indians of North America were found, by the 

 Europeans, in possession of the means of manufacturing 

 cordage, and of making a variety of articles of fine thread, 

 both by ingenious plaiting, and by weaving in its simpler 

 modes. It does not appear that, for these purposes, they 

 used the flaxen and hempen fibres which we employ ; nor 

 does it appear that the phormion tenax, (if, indeed, this 

 continent or its islands produced that plant, so abundant 

 in New Zealand, and elsewhere in Polynesia,) nor that the 

 nettle, \iirtica\ each of them so much superior in strength 

 and elasticity to hemp, were known to the Indians as 

 textile fibre. Sinew and hide were among the substances 

 extensively used by them, and preferred for many purposes 

 for which their superior strength and the minute divisibility 

 of the former peculiarly fitted them. The flax and hemp 

 introduced from Europe, have by no means, even now, 

 and among those Indians whose domestication has given 

 them the readiest access to European j)rodnciions, super- 

 seded the use of the substances employed by their ancestors : 

 and, if this retention be not merely a consequence of 

 partiality for that which is derived from the remote past — 



