SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTEiRN UNITED STATES 451 



Vaca, 1905, p. 25). The De Soto chroniclers do not mention these 

 until after the Spaniards had left the Apalachee, but their descrip- 

 tions are intended to apply generally to the people of the entire sec- 

 tion. The Fidalgo of Elvas notes "native blankets resembling 

 shawls, some being made of the inner bark of trees and some from a 

 plant like daffodils which when pounded remains like flax." He 

 adds that the women wore two such blankets, the men only one 

 (Robertson, 1933, pp. 75-76). Usually, however, they are spoken 

 of as the clothing for women rather than men. A little farther on 

 it is stated by the same writer that a considerable number of "blankets 

 made of thread from the bark of trees" was found in the barbacoas 

 or storehouses of the Indians of Cofitachequi (Robertson, 1933, p. 93). 

 Ranjel is a little fuller in his description. He says that 



Indian men and women came forth [from Ichisi] to receive them, and the 

 women were clothed in white and made a fine appearance . . . The white clothes 

 with which the Indian women were clothed were mantles, apparently of home- 

 spun linen and some of them were very thin. They make the thread of them 

 from the bark of the mulberry tree, not the outside, but the intermediate layers ; 

 and they know how to make use of it and to spin it, and to dress it as well and 

 to weave it. They make very fine mantles, and they wear one from the girdle 

 down and another fastened on one side with the end over the shoulders like those 

 Bohemians^ or gypsies, who wander sometimes through Spain ; and the thread is 

 of such a quality that one who was there assured me that he saw the women 

 spin it from that mulberry bark and make it as good as the best thread from 

 Portugal that women can get in Spain for their work, and finer and somewhat 

 like it and stronger. (Bourne, 1904, vol. 2, pp. 87-88.) 



The "me" referred to is not Ranjel but Oviedo, who incorporated Ran- 

 jel 's narrative into his Historia. Mantles or shawls of the material 

 just described were found throughout the Gulf area by the Spaniards, 

 and some of them were finally used to calk the brigantines in which 

 the Spaniards left (Robertson, 1933, p. 264). We have evidence that 

 something besides mulberry bark, if not the "silk grass" of Virginia, 

 was used as far west as the Mississippi, for Garcilaso de la Vega says 

 that the blankets they obtained from the Indians there were made "of 

 a certain herb similar to mallows, which has a fibre like linen. They 

 make thread from it and color it beautifully in any shade they wish" 

 (Garcilaso, 1723, pp. 726-727). This was perhaps "the bark of the 

 nettle" which Penicaut (in Margry, 1875-86, vol. 5, p. 465) gives as 

 an alterative material to mulberry bark, and, with less doubt, the 

 "wild hemp" described by Adair : 



They have a wild hemp that grows about six feet high, in open, rich, level 

 lands, and which usually ripens in July : it is plenty on our frontier settlements. 

 When it is fit for use, they pull, steep, peel, and beat it ; and the old women spin 

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

 to hasten the motion. (Adair, 1775, p. 453.) 



