50 GUP-SHAPED AND OTHER LAPIDAEIAN SCULPTURES. 



spin it off the distaffs with wooden machines, having some clay on the middle 

 of them to hasten the motion. When the coarse thread is prepared, they 

 put it into a frame about six feet square, and instead of a shuttle they thrust 

 through the thread with a long cane, having a large string through the web, 

 which they shift at every second course of the thread When they have 

 thus finished their arduous labom-, they paint each side of the carpet with 

 such figures of various colours as their fruitful imaginations devise, particu- 

 larly the images of those birds and beasts they are acquainted with, and 

 likewise of themselves, acting in their social and martial stations."* Had 

 the contrivances, called " machines" by Adair, been re"al spindles, he proba- 

 bly would have recognized them as such, as he undoubtedly had witnessed 

 their use in Great Britain, which country he left during the first half of the 

 eighteenth century, and where spinning with distaff and spindle has not yet 

 entirely fallen into disuse in our time. 



Certain Indian tribes in remote western districts, the Navajos and 

 Pueblo Indians, for instance, use at the present time spindles for spinning 

 the cotton and sheeps' wool employed in the manufacture of blankets and 

 other textile articles. Their whorls are discs of wood, stone, bone, horn, 

 and burned cinj. The archaeological collection of the United States 

 National Museum contains no North American object of stone or clay, 

 found north of Mexico, in which I can recognize a spindle-whorl. In Mexico, 

 it is well known, spindles were in general use, and the whorls (^malacatl) 

 are among the common objects seen in collections of Aztec antiquities. 

 They are represented in the National Museum by many specimens, all 

 made of terra-cotta, and in some instances tastefully ornamented, like the 

 originals of Figures 40 and 41, which were obtained by the late Colonel 

 Brantz Mayer at Tezcuco, and presented to the Smithsonian Institution in 

 1862. The Mexican method of spinning is illustrated by designs in the 

 Mendoza Codex, published*by Lord Kingsboi'ough. 



It doubtless will be a matter of great interest to archseologists, both in 

 this country and in Europe, to learn that large cupped blocks, fully resem- 

 bling those of the Old World, have of late -years been observed in the 



* Adair : Tlie History of the American Indians ; London, 1775, y>. 422. — The remains of textile 

 fabrics having heen found in mounds of this country, it follows that some sort of weaving was prac- 

 tised hero in times long past. 



