een recovered from mounds
or burial places, but there can be no doubt that the mound-building
tribes were experts in this art. Frequent mention is made of the feather
work of the natives by the earliest explorers of the Mississippi valley,
and the character of the work may be gathered from the extracts already
given and from those which follow.

John Smith, speaking of the feather work of the Virginia Indians, says:

We haue seene some vse mantels made of Turky feathers, so
prettily wrought and woven with threads that nothing could be
discerned but the feathers.[43]

Lawson mentions a "doctor" of the Santee nation who "was warmly and
neatly clad with a match coat, made of turkies feathers, which makes a
pretty show, seeming as if it was a garment of the deepest silk
shag."[44]

In another place the same author says:

Their feather match coats are very pretty, especially some of
them, which are made extraordinary charming, containing
several pretty figures wrought in feathers, making them seem
like a fine flower silk shag; and when new and fresh, they
become a bed very well, instead of a quilt. Some of another
sort are made of hair, raccoon, bever, or squirrel skins,
which are very warm. Others again are made of the greenpart
of the skin of a mallard's head, which they sew perfectly
well together, their thread being either the sinews of a deer
divided very small, or silk grass. When these are finished,
they look very finely, though they must needs be very
troublesome to make.[45]

Du Pratz thus describes the art in Louisiana:

If the women know how to do this kind of work they make
mantles either of feathers or woven of the bark of the
mulberry tree. We will describe their method of doing this.
The feather mantles are made on a frame similar to that on
which the peruke makers work hair; they spread the feathers
in the same manner and fasten them on old fish nets or old
mantles of mulberry bark. They are placed, spread in this
manner, one over the other and on both sides; for this
purpose small turkey feathers are used; women who have
feathers of swans or India ducks, which are white, make these
feather mantles for women of high rank.[46]

Butel-Dumont describes feather work of the natives of Louisiana briefly
as follows:

They [the women] also, without a spinning wheel or distaff,
spin the hair or