PRODUCTS OF THE ART. 



In undertaking to classify the textile fabrics of tbe mound region it 

 is found that, although there is an unbroken gradation from the rudest 

 and heaviest textile coiistnictions to the most delicate and refined 

 textures, a number of well-marked divisions may be made. The 

 broadest of these is based on the use of spun as opposed to unspun 

 strands or parts, a classification corresponding somewhat closely to the 

 division into rigid and pliable forms. Material, method of combination 

 of parts, and function may each be made the basis of classification, 

 but for present purposes a simple presentation of the whole body of 

 products, beginning with the rudest or most primitive forms and ending 

 with the most elaborate and artistic products, is sufflcient. The mate- 

 rial will be presented in the following order: (1) Wattle work; (2) 

 basketry; (3) matting; (4) pliable fabrics or cloths. 



WATTLE WORK. 



The term wattling is applied to such constructions as employ by 

 interlacing, plaiting, etc., somewhat heavy, rigid, or slightly pliable 

 parts, as rods, boughs, canes, and vines. Primitive shelters and dwell- 

 ings are very often constructed in this manner, and rafts, cages, 

 bridges, fish weirs, and inclosures of various kinds were and still are 

 made or jiartly made in this raanuer. As a matter of course, few of 

 these constructions are known to us save through historic channels; 

 but traces of wattle work are found in the mounds of the lower Mis- 

 sissippi valley, where imprint s of tbe interlaced canes occur in the baked 

 clay plaster with which the dwellings were finished. When we con- 

 sider the nature of the materials at hand, and the close correspondence 

 in habits and customs of our prehistoric peoples with the tribes found 

 living by the earliest explorers and settlers, we naturally conclude that 

 this class of constructi(m was very common at all known periods of 

 native American history. 



The constructors of native dwellings generally employed pliable 

 branches or saplings, which are bound together with vines, twigs, and 

 other more pliable woody forms. John Smith says of the Indians of 

 Virginia ^ that — 



Their houses are built like nur Arbors, of small youug springs bowed ami tyed, and 

 so close covered ^vlth Mats, or the barkes of trees very handsomely, that notwith- 

 standing either wiude, raine, or weather, they are as warm as stooues, but very 

 smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoaketogoeiuto 

 right over the fire. 



'Hist. Virginia, John Smith. Richmond, 1819. vol. i. p. 130. 



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