180 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



1 cm. apart and are twined upward from left to right, so that it is 

 identical with specimens from late prehistoric burials of the Chugach, 

 Aleut, and Tena, as well as with the sleeping and kayak mats of the 

 modern Kuskokwim-Kotzebue Eskimo (de Laguna, 1947, pis. xix, xx; 

 1956, pis. 52 and 53; Oswalt, 1952, pi. 18, A, B). The undecorated 

 grass mats on the walls and floor of the Eyak sleeping room may 

 well have been the same (Birket-Smith and de Laguna, 1938, p. 34). 

 Coarse twined grass mats were found on the floor and sleeping plat- 

 form of a bm-ned house at the Platinum Village site in Bristol Bay 

 (Larsen, 1950, p. 184). Twined cedar-bark mats are common on the 

 Northwest Coast (Drucker, 1950, Traits 718, 733, etc.). In general, 

 twined mats, used for bedding, seats, and for shrouds, have a very 

 wide distribution in both the Old and New Worlds, and the oldest 

 direction of twining seems to have been up from left to right (de 

 Laguna, 1947, pp. 217 jff., 272). 



BLANKETS 



The geometric patterned woolen blanket, known at Yakutat in 

 early historic (and late prehistoric?) times (see pp. 171 and 196), 

 is an obvious link with the Tlingit of southeastern Alaska. According 

 to our informants, a number of Yakutat women knew how to make 

 Chilkat blankets of conventional, modern type with representative 

 crest designs, since they had at one time been "married into Chilkat." 

 There was no specific reference to pattern boards which they may 

 have used ; certainly there is none at Yakutat now. 



The knowledge of weaving blankets may have extended even farther 

 northwest than Yakutat. Thus, Captain Cook (1785, vol. 2, p. 368) 

 who visited Prince William Soimd in 1778 reported "one or two 

 woolen garments like those of Nootka." Strange (1928, pp. 42 f.) 

 also said that the Chugach in 1786 had thick warm woolen blankets, 

 but valued them too highly to sell any. He bought the skin of the 

 animal from which it was obtained, and described it as very similar 

 to a sheepskin. In a report by Potap Zaikov, who explored Prince 

 Wilham Sound in 1783 (Tikhmenev, 1863, App., p. 6 ^), the Russians 

 observed "... a blanket made of white wool, similar to sheep's wool, 

 plaited and fringed. The blanket was ornamented with yellow and 

 coffee color." Our Chugach informants, however, believed that it 

 was not until after the arrival of the Russians that they themselves 

 learned how to weave goat wool blankets (Birket-Smith, 1953, p. 64). 

 In 1884, Abercrombie noted that the Eyak slept under woven goat 

 wool blankets about a yard wide and 5 feet long, but our informants 



' Translation by Ivan Petrofl. Permission to quote this passage has been given by the Director of the 

 Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. 



