John Smith, and Adair bear witness to the primitive practice of
the art in Virginia and the Carolinas. Smith uses the following words:

Betwixt their hands and thighes, their women vse to spin,
the barkes of trees, Deere sinewes, or a kinde of grasse
they call Pemmenaw, of these they make a thread very even
and readily. This thread serveth for many vses. As about
their housing apparell, as also they make nets for fishing,
for the quantitie as formally as ours. They make also with
it lines for angles.[29]

The Cherokees and other Indians with whom Adair came in contact
preserved in their purity many of the ancient practices. The following
extracts are, therefore, of much importance to the historian of the
textile art in America:

Formerly, the Indians made very handsome carpets. 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. When the coarse thread
is prepared, they put it into a frame about six feet square,
and instead of a shuttle, they thrust through the thread with
a long cane, having a large string through the web, which
they shift at every second course of the thread. When they
have thus finished their arduous labour, they paint each side
of the carpet with such figures, of various colours, as their
fruitful imaginations devise; particularly the images of
those birds and beasts they are acquainted with; and likewise
of themselves, acting in their social, and martial stations.
There is that due proportion and so much wild variety in the
design, that would really strike a curious eye with pleasure
and admiration. J. W--t, Esq., a most skilful linguist in the
Muskohge dialect, assures me, that time out of mind they
passed the woof with a shuttle; and they have a couple of
threddles, which they move with the hand so as to enable them
to make good dispatch, something after our manner of weaving.
This is sufficiently confirmed by their method of working
broad garters, sashes, shot pouches, broad belts, and the
like, which are decorated all over with beautiful stripes and
chequers.