tever has been collected. Of embroideries, featherwork, and the like,
so frequently mentioned by early travelers, hardly a trace is left.

The relations of our historic tribes to the ancient peoples of our
continent and to all of the nations, ancient and modern, who built
mounds and earthworks, are now generally considered so intimate that no
objection can be raised to the utilization of the accounts of early
explorers in the elucidation of such features of the art as archeology
has failed to record. The first step in this study may consist quite
properly of a review of what is recorded of the historic art.
Subsequently the purely archeologic data will be given.

PRODUCTS OF THE ART.

In undertaking to classify the textile fabrics of the mound region it
is found that, although there is an unbroken gradation from the rudest
and heaviest textile constructions to the most delicate and refined
textures, a number of well-marked divisions may be made. The
broadest of these is based on the use of spun as opposed to unspun
strands or parts, a classification corresponding somewhat closely to the
division into rigid and pliable forms. Material, method of combination
of parts, and function may each be made the basis of classification,
but for present purposes a simple presentation of the whole body of
products, beginning with the rudest or most primitive forms and ending
with the most elaborate and artistic products, is sufficient. The material
will be presented in the following order: (1) Wattle work; (2)
basketry; (3) matting; (4) pliable fabrics or cloths.

WATTLE WORK.

The term wattling is applied to such constructions as employ by
interlacing, plaiting, etc., somewhat heavy, rigid, or slightly pliable
parts, as rods, boughs, canes, and vines. Primitive shelters and
dwellings are very often constructed in this manner, and rafts, cages,
bridges, fish weirs, and inclosures of various kinds were and still are
made or partly made in this manner. As a matter of course, few of these
constructions are known to us save through historic channels; but traces
of wattle work are found in the mounds of the lower Mississippi valley,
where imprints of the interlaced canes occur in the baked clay plaster
with which the dwellings were finished. When we consider the nature of
the materials at hand, and the close correspondence in habits and
customs of our prehistoric peoples with the tribes found living by the
earliest explorers