I'Jg BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 1S2 



The Indians use it in all their little Manufactures, twisting a Thread of it 

 that is prodigiously Strong. Of this they make their Baskets and the Aprons 

 which their Women wear about their Middles, for Decency's Sake. These are 

 long enough to wrap around them and reach down to their Knees, with a Fringe 

 on the under part by way of Ornament. 



Lawson (1714), when alluding to the Indians of North Carolina 

 and to their mauf actures, stated : 



The Indian women's work is to cook the victuals for the whole family, and to 

 make mats, baskets, girdles, of possum hair, and such like. . . . 



The baskets our neighboring Indians make are all made of a very fine sort 

 of bulrushes, and sometimes of silk grass, which they work with figures of 

 beasts, birds, fishes, etc. 



Holmes (1903) in describing the pottery from the Piedmont of 



Virginia states : 



In northwestern North Carolina and southwestern Virginia a somewhat 

 marked local variety of pottery is developed which partakes to some extent of 

 the character of the ware of the far Northwest, and probably represents some of 

 the tribes which occupied the Virginia highland about the period of English 

 Colonization. Indeed, traces of this variety occur on the James in its middle 

 course, and appear on the Dan, the Yadkin, and possibly on the upper Shenan- 

 doah, . . . The pottery is always rude, and consists of simple pots, nearly always 

 showing the soot-blackened surfaces of culinary utensils. Their strongest char- 

 acteristics are the very general presence of rudely modeled looped handles, 

 which connect the outcurved rim with the shoulder, bridging a short, slightly 

 constricted neck, and the frequent occurrence of a thickened collar, sometimes 

 slightly overhanging, after the Iroquoian style, but marked with cords and cord 

 indenting, characteristic of the rim decoration of the Upper Mississippi and 

 Lake Michigan pottery. More extensive collecting may enable us to separate 

 these wares into two or more groups or varieties. . . . The early wares are 

 minus handles of any sort and the thickened collar is placed among minority 

 of pottery traits of the early horizons. Cord marking came in early and per- 

 sisted up into the late horizons, but to a diminishing amount. 



Twined bag impressions, listed by Lewis and Kneberg (1946) as 

 "Fabric-marked or Cord-Wrapped Dowel-Marked of the Baumer 

 type," are well represented in the reservoir basin. They state : 



It is apparent that the fabric was heavy, possibly matting. There is no evi- 

 dence to indicate that the markings were incidental to the shaping of the vessel 

 in a basket, since the corrugations resulting from the heavy warp do not run 

 consistently in any one direction on the vessel. In making this statement we do 

 not overlook the possibility that the origin of the style might have evoked from 

 a technique of constructing the vessel within a basket. 



This type is the most prevalent ware found in the eiirly Candy 

 Creek Focus and tlie only type found in the Watts Bar Focus. The 

 exception to this, that the Tennessee ware differs from that of the 

 Buggs Island Reservoir ware in being limestone-tempered rather 

 than sand-tempered, in itself indicates a much later developmental 

 pottery sequence. A few sherds of this same type were found in 



