Notes respecting certain Textile Substances in use among the North American Indians

 

By William Green

 

[Originally published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in Transactions, Original Series, Volume 2 (1831)]

 

The Indians of North America were found, by the Europeans, in possession of the means of manufacturing cordage, and of making a variety of articles of fine thread, both by ingenious plaiting, and by weaving in its simpler modes. It does not appear that, for these purposes, they used the flaxen and hempen fibres which we employ; nor does it appear that the phormion tenax, (if, indeed, this continent or its islands produced that plant, so abundant in New Zealand, and elsewhere in Polynesia,) nor that the nettle, [urticu] each of them so much superior in strength and elasticity to hemp, were known to the Indians as textile fibre. Sinew and hide were among the substances extensively used by them, and preferred for many purposes for which their superior strength and the minute divisibility of the former peculiarly fitted them. The flax and hemp introduced from Europe, have by no means, even now, and among those Indians whose domestication has given them the readiest access to European productions, super­seded the use of the substances employed by their ancestors : and, if this retention be not merely a consequence of partiality for that which is derived from the remote past—but be founded on a knowledge, either of the sufficient or the superior fitness of the articles to the end of their application, or on the facility with which, from their abundance, they may every where be procured, it may be useful to record what are the substances, and what the process by which they are prepared, in the hope of enlarging our own list of materials useful in manufactures and arts.

 

The inner bark of the more slender branches of the elm, of hornbeam [carpinus], of American walnut [juglams cinerea], of linden [tilia], of bois de plomb [ ? ], being stripped from the wood, and the outer bark scraped off, is macerated in lye of wood-ashes, and boiled in it, then rinsed in pure water; and, for many purposes, such as the making of various ligatures, no other preparation than merely twisting it to increase its flexibility, (as is done with withs in the same intention            used. But for plaiting and weaving, the bark having been treated as above, is beaten with a mallet, until its separated fibres become of the required tenuity. Among the articles made of these filaments, are the bands which, passing round the head and shoulders, sustain the weights the Indians have to carry in their excursions. The strain these bands bear on such occasions is very great. They are ingeniously plaited, often highly ornamented with embroidery, are two or three inches in breadth, are divided at the ends into narrow strips, for the more convenient attachment of the suspended baggage, and they are as soft and pliant as any thing made of flax can be.

 

For coarser purposes the bark of white cedar [thuya occidentalis], is used. It does not undergo the preparation stated above, but is merely supplied by twisting. All the above materials may be procured several feet in length.

 

For stitching the sheets of birch bark, of which their canoes are made, slender roots of the spruce tree are used. The root is merely slit longitudinally into strips, as thick as packthread, moistened, twisted and applied. The sewing is then payed over with resin extracted from pine-knots by boiling them in water.

 

The phormion tenax, although so exceedingly strong, contains some principle soluble in weak alkaline lye and even in soap and water, the removal of which principle reduces its strength below that of most other fibres, very much limiting its utility. The fibre procured by the Indians, in not being weakened by these menstrua, has some advantage over that otherwise invaluable filament.

 

It cannot be doubted that every textile fibre of vegetable origin would be a fit material for paper—and it is probable that the toughness of that article, which ought to be extreme, might be made as nearly equal to that of the original material as is consistent with its nature, by re­ducing it to pulp by sufficiently pounding it, instead of hashing it, (as is usually done,) into particles having little more coherence than is afterwards supplied by sizing the sheet.