XX. THE FIBER PRODUCTS OF THE FARM 



"Give me of your roots, Tamarack! 

 Of your fibrous roots, Larch-Tree! 

 My canoe to bind together, 

 So to bind the ends together 

 That the water may not enter, 

 That the river may not wet me!" 



— Longfellow {Hiawatha's Sailing). 



Before the days of spinning, what did one do when he 

 needed a string? Just what the country boy still does when 

 out in the woods. If he has to tie something and lacks a 

 string, he borrows one from nature. It may be a tough root 

 of tamarack or elm, a twig of leatherwood or willow, a strip of 

 willow peel or of the inner bark of basswood. Best of all 

 barks is that of young pawpaw trees, which may be stripped 

 upward from the base in bark-strings having great length and 

 strength and pliancy. 



From using single strips of plant tissues such as these (or 

 of more valuable rawhide), transition is easy to the use of 

 bundles of strips for tying. The harvestman binds his 

 sheaves with a band of grain stems, drawn tightly, the ends 

 overlapped, twisted together, and tucked under to form a 

 knot. And if a mower wishes to bind up a large bundle of 

 hay with short grass stems, he makes a virtue of necessity, 

 and twists the short stems together, combining them into a 

 "hay-rope" of any desired length, and binds his hay with that. 



The hay-rope illustrates a fundamental operation on which 

 all textile arts are based. It is elemental spinning — the 

 twisting of fibres together to combine their length and 

 strength. 



"In Samoa, it is the work of women to make nets chiefly 

 from the bark of the hibiscus. After the rough outer surface 

 has been scraped off with a shell on a board, the remaining 



155 



