Examples of Southeastern Native Dress Textiles. Women’s dress (below); mantles (above)
Clothing has been present in human history for tens of thousands of years. Clothing refers to something that covers the body. There are multiple stages of production used to make textiles or fabrics. These include gathering raw materials, spinning the materials, weaving the spun yarn, sewing the pieces together into a garment, and dying and ornamenting the finished product. Fabric doesn’t survive in the archaeological record because it easily decomposes over time. Creating fabrics requires the use of many different tools, and those tools do survive over time. By looking for these tools, archaeologists can see evidence of fabric production.
Raw Materials
The first stage in creating textiles is getting the raw fibers. Fibers were made from either animals or plants. Animal fibers can include any animal with a fur coat. The coat, or hide, is tanned and sewn like cloth. To tan the hide, beamers, tools made from animal bones, were used to remove the hair. The hide may have been soaked in water first to make it easier to remove the hair.
For animals with longer fur, that fur can be collected and spun into yarn. Removing the hair can be as simple as collecting it as animals molt, like when they scratch on a bush. Humans could also use a comb or sharp stone to remove the hair from the live animal. This is known as shearing. Once it was removed, the hair would need to be cleaned, probably with sticks. The fur may have had to be greased to keep it from drying out and breaking. Finally, the fiber would be carded, which makes it easier to spin. Carding uses a comb, often made from animal bones.
In Southeastern North America humans used bison, squirrel, muskrat, and rabbit to make fabric. Ethnohistorian John Swanton described bison hair as being “woven into belts, garters and other similar articles.” Bear hides were also used. They were more common in the north, and made into winter robes, bed coverings, and moccasins by the Chickasaw. James Adair recorded the use of elk among the Chickasaw for heavier moccasins during the late eighteenth century. John Swanton described Spanish chroniclers mentions of ‘marten’ or muskrat skins “for a wide use of cloaks and robes worn by the upper classes.”
Plants used for fiber in the Southeastern United States included grasses, thistle, Indian hemp or dogbane, wild hemp, stinging nettle, milkweed, mulberry bark, Spanish moss, cane, pawpaw, palmetto, willow, slippery elm and basswood. Archaeologists using high-powered microscopes found that nettles, milkweed, dogbane, and red mulberry have long, strong, and fine fibers; red cedar, black willow, basswood and cane have coarse fibers that likely made them better for baskets and mats. Although plants did not necessarily need to be processed before use, for most plants, retting, or soaking in water, was used to make a smoother fiber.
Spinning
Spinning fiber is the craft of transforming raw material into thread. Spinning involves stretching out fibers with one hand and twisting them with the other. It can also be done by twisting the fiber between the spinner’s hand and thigh. Using a round stone with a center hole to spin the fibers, called a whorl, made the yarn stronger. Spindle whorls can be made of many materials, including wood, stone, and clay; most have a central hole to fit onto the wooden spindle. Eventually, hand spindles were used, where whorls were attached to a stick spindle, creating a drop spindle. In some cultures, distaffs were also used. Distaffs are short sticks that hold the fibrous mass while the spindle is held in the other hand, making spinning a portable task. Later, spinning wheels were invented in some cultures, which greatly increased the amount of yarn that could be spun.
Related to spindle whorls are the presence of spinning bowls. Smaller bowls are used to support the spindle as it spins while larger bowls hold the yarn as it is spun. They may have held water, allowing the wet fibers to be more easily spun. Small loops on the bowls could have been used to direct the thread.
Archaeological evidence of spinning and spin direction preference can be seen in pottery vessels. Pottery was often decorated in the Southeast with fabric, and by studying the impressions left on vessels we can identify the direction of spin preferred by different groups. Direction of spin, and design of fabrics, may have been passed down across generations and used by families or clans as a symbol of their affiliation.
Weaving
Once fibers were spun into yarn they were then woven into items. Weaving uses looms, and four types of looms were present in the Southeast. These include backstrap looms, free hanging warp looms, warp weighted looms, and tablet looms. Backstrap looms were likely made of wood and don’t survive over time. Hanging warp looms were attached to tree branches. Warp weighted looms are fixed in the ground and use rock weights. Tablet looms are made from stone, and have holes drilled into them. These have been found in the Southeast. Tablet weaving in particular was likely used to create belts and sashes, important parts of a Southeastern native’s clothing.
Dying and Ornamentation
Once fabric was created, it was often dyed. Dying could have been done at three stages: raw material, spun material, or finished product. Dying was a multi-stage process. For the color in the dye to ‘stick’ or adhere to the fabric they must be combined with a mordant; otherwise, the color will wash away. Typical mordants include salt and lye. Some dyes don’t need mordants because they are made with tannins, such as walnut. Dyes that need mordants include those made from osage orange tree, bedstraw, berries, sumac, pokeberries, mimosa leaves, and clematis, among others. Large bowls were used to mix and hold the dye.
After the fabric was made and dyed, it could also be adorned with ornaments. These might include bird feathers. Feathers could be twisted onto a cord and then the cord was sewn onto fabrics. Turkey was an important animal used for its feathers by Southeastern natives. Shell beads were also made and attached to fabrics. These were usually made from mussel shells. Gastropod shell fragments, cut at either end, were also used. An example using marginella shell beads, which would not need to be cut, is visible on Powhatan’s mantle from the early seventeenth-century Virginia coast (https://www.ashmolean.org/powhatans-mantle) .
References Cited
Alt, Susan
1999 Spindle Whorls and Fiber Production at Early Cahokian Settlements. Southeastern Archaeology 18(2): 124-135.
Bushnell, David I., Jr.
1909 The Various Uses of Buffalo Hair by the North American Indians. American Anthropologist 11(3): 401-425.
Collingwood, Peter
2015 (1982) The Techniques of Tablet Weaving. Echo Point Books and Media LLC, Brattleboro, Vermont.
Drooker, Penelope B.
2000 Approaching Fabrics Through Impressions on Pottery. Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings 773: 59-68.
1992 Mississippian Village Textiles at Wickliffe. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Harwood, Jane and Gillian Edom
2012 Nettle Fibre: Its Prospects, Uses and Problems in Historical Perspective. Textile History 43(1): 107-119.
Holland, Nina
1978 The Weaving Primer: A Complete Guide to Inkle, Backstrap, and Frame Looms. Chilton Book Company, Radnor, PA.
Rogers, J. Daniel, Carla J. Dove, Marcy Heacker and Gary R. Graves.
2002 Identification of Feathers in Textiles from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma. Southeastern Archaeology 21(2): 245-251.
Whitford, Andrew C.
1941 Textile Fibers used in Aboriginal North America. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 38(1): 1-22.
Williams, Samuel Cole
1930 Adair’s History of the American Indians. Watauga Press, Jackson City, TN.
Willoughby, Charles C.
1952 Textile Fabrics from Spiro Mound. Missouri Archaeologist 14: 107-108.