e embroidery frame,
but the work of the natives of the United States was on a decidedly
lower plane. In basketry and certain classes of garment-making, the
inhabitants of the Mississippi valley were well advanced at the period
of European conquest, and there is ample evidence to show that the
mound-building peoples were not behind historic tribes in this matter.
In many sections of our country the art is still practiced, and with a
technical perfection and an artistic refinement of high order, as the
splendid collections in our museums amply show.

The degree of success in the textile art is not necessarily a reliable
index of the culture status of the peoples concerned, as progress in a
particular art depends much upon the encouragement given to it by local
features of environment. The tribe that had good clay used earthenware
and neglected basketry, and the community well supplied with skins of
animals did not need to undertake the difficult and laborious task of
spinning fibers and weaving garments and bedding. Thus it appears that
well-advanced peoples may have produced inferior textiles and that
backward tribes may have excelled in the art. Caution is necessary in
using the evidence furnished by the art to aid in determining relative
degrees of culture.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

The failure of the textile art to secure a prominent place in the field
of archeologic evidence is due to the susceptibility of the products to
decay. Examples of archaic work survive to us only by virtue of
exceptionally favorable circumstances; it rarely happened that mound
fabrics were so conditioned, as the soil in which they were buried is
generally porous and moist; they were in some cases preserved through
contact with objects of copper, the oxides of that metal having a
tendency to arrest decay. The custom of burial in caves and rock
shelters has led to the preservation of numerous fabrics through the
agency of certain salts with which the soil is charged. Preservation by
charring is common, and it is held by some that carbonization without
the agency of fire has in some cases taken place.

Considerable knowledge of the fabrics of the ancient North American
tribes is preserved in a way wholly distinct from the preceding. The
primitive potter employed woven textiles in the manufacture of
earthenware; during the processes of construction the fabrics were
impressed on the soft clay, and when the vessels were baked the
impression