PREHISTORIC TEXTILE ART OF EASTERN 

 UNITED STATES 



By W. H. Holmes 

 INTRODUCTORY. 



SCOPE OF THE WORK. 



About the year 1890 the writer was requested by the Director of tbe 

 Bureau of Ethnology to prepare certain papers on aboriginal art, to 

 accompany the final report of Dr. Cyrus Thomas on his explorations of 

 mounds and other ancient remains in eastern United States. These 

 papers were to treat of those arts represented most fully by relics 

 recovered in the field explored. They included studies of the art of 

 pottery, of the textile art and of art in shell, and a paper on native 

 tobacco pipes. Three of these papers were already completed when it 

 was decided to issue the main work of Dr. Thomas independently of the 

 several papers prepared by his associates. It thus happens that the 

 present paper, written to form a limited section of a work restricted to 

 narrow geogi'aphic limits, covers so small a fragment of the aboriginal 

 textile field. 



The materials considered in this paper include little not germane to 

 the studies conducted by Dr. Thoma.s in the mound region, the collec- 

 tions used having been made largely by members of the Bureau of Eth- 

 nology acting under his supervision. Two or three papers have already 

 been published in the annual reports of the Bureau in which parts of the 

 same collections have been utilized, and a few of the illustrations pre 

 pared for these papers are reproduced in this more comprehensive 

 study. 



Until within the last few years textile fabrics have hardly been 

 recognized as having a place among the materials to be utilized in the 

 discussion of North American archeology. Recent studies of the art 

 of the mound-budding tribes have, however, served to demonstrate their 

 importance, and the evidence now furnished by this art can be placed 

 alongside of that of arts in clay, stone, and metal, as a factor in 

 determining the culture status of the prehistoric peoples and in defining 

 their relations to the historic Indians. This change is due to the more 



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