HISTORY IN AMERICA 205 



Early History of Cotton. Cotton is a tropical plant, which is 

 adapted also to the semitropic and mild temperate regions. The 

 history of the plant, both as to its origin and as to its first use, is 

 obscure. For ages, we know, it has been a native of the tropical 

 parts of both hemispheres. India, it appears, as early as 1500 B.C. 

 was the center of an important cotton industry. Many centuries 

 before the Christian Era, the Egyptians, Greeks and Phoenicians had 

 reached an advanced stage in the artistic spinning and weaving of 

 cotton fiber. 



Although a knowledge of the cotton plant and its usefulness 

 spread gradually to China, Japan, and Southern Europe, the culture 

 of the plant and the manufacture of cotton cloth seem not to have 

 been practised in early times by the people of these countries. Silk, 

 linen, and wool were preferred, and cotton cloth was used only when 

 brought from India. Even in the Middle Ages the countries of 

 Southern Europe had not engaged in the production and manufac- 

 ture of cotton. Spain and Turkey were the first to enter this in- 

 dustry. In the fourteenth century Granada, Spain, was noted for 

 its cotton cloth. From Spain and Turkey the use of cotton spread 

 to other countries of Southern Europe and advanced gradually north- 

 ward. By the middle of the eighteenth century England had de- 

 veloped an important trade in cotton and was beginning to import 

 the raw material from America. 



History in America. Columbus found the cotton plant growing 

 in the West Indies. Other explorers in the early part of the six- 

 teenth century found cotton in Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. In these 

 countries the fiber cotton provided the chief articles of clothing. 

 In a word, cotton was known and used in what are now the Latin 

 American countries at the time of the settlement in North America 

 by the English. But, strangely, the aborigines of the section now 

 comprising the cotton belt of the United States seem not to have 

 known or used cotton. It is, therefore, doubtful that the plant is 

 indigenous to any part of the United States. 



The early colonists of Virginia, bringing seed from Europe, soon 

 began the culture of cotton and there is evidence that in the lattei 

 half of the seventeenth century they made cotton cloth. Cotton is 



