450 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



Regarding opossum hair, we learn that the Indians observed by 

 Lawson (1860, p. 199) spun it into girdles and garters, and Du Pratz 

 states that, by the Natchez, it was spun and made into garters 

 "which they afterwards dye red" (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, p. 

 94; Swanton, 1911, p. 64). 



Catesby, who was familiar with the tribes earlier met by Lawson, 

 mentions the use of raccoon hair, but the opossum may have been 

 intended (Catesby, 1731-43, vol. 2, p. xi). 



In Don Carlos de Siguenza's narrative of his reconnaisance of 

 Pensacola Harbor, he states that, along with "bison-wool done up 

 in balls," and "spindles," they found in a basket left by the Indians 

 "beaver- wool or hair in bags" (Leonard, 1939, p. 162). 



In later times, as Speck records of the Yuchi, horsehair probably 

 took the place of the aboriginal materials. 



The most elaborate use of animal hair, however, is recorded of 

 the Choctaw by their anonymous chronicler, who says that the Indians 

 of this tribe made 



some articles of bison wool which the women spin, of which they make garters 

 and tint them with various indelible colors. They also make a fabric, partly 

 of this wool, and partly of fibre from a very strong herb which they spin. 

 This fabric is double like two-sided handkerchiefs and thick as canvas, half 

 an ell wide and three quarters long. That serves them as a skirt. (Swanton, 

 1918, pp. 67-68.) 



The longer cords and ropes were made of vegetable substances, 

 of which two are mentioned particularly by early writers, mulberry 

 bark and a kind of native hemp. The latter was popularly called silk 

 grass but also seems to have been known by the Powhatan Indians 

 as pemmencaw, the spinning of which has already been described. 



They make [their cordage], of their naturall hempe and flax togither with 

 their cuning dressing of that, and preserving the whole yeare great litches or 

 bundells of the same, to be used upon any occasyon. (Strachey, 1849, p. 68.) 



I do not know whether Strachey means that two different vegetable 

 substances were woven together or whether there was one which 

 served the purposes of both hemp and flax. 



We hear of these two materials and the textiles made from them 

 shortly after Florida was discovered. Peter Martyr, on the author- 

 ity of Francisco of Chicora, says of the aborigines of our present 

 State of South Carolina: 



Although they are partially clothed with skins of wild beasts, they use 

 cotton such as the Milanese call bombasio, and they make nets of the fiber 

 of certain tough grasses, just as hemp and flax are used for the same pur- 

 poses in Europe. (Anghierra, 1912, p. 43.) 



Cabeza de Vaca, whose observations date from the year 1528, 

 speaks of "mantles made of thread and of poor quality, with which 

 the women [of Apalachen] cover parts of their bodies" (Cabeza de 



