Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/264

of their dress, as well as every {193} utensil in their huts. The Osage women appear to excel in these employments. Before the Cherokees burnt down their town on the Verdigris, their houses were chiefly covered with hand-wove matts of bulrushes. Their baskets and bed matts of this material, were parti-coloured and very handsome. This manufacture, I am told, is done with the assistance of three sticks, arranged in some way so as to answer the purpose of a loom, and the strands are inlaid diagonally. They, as well as the Cherokees and others, frequently take the pains to unravel old blankets and cloths, and re-weave the yarn into belts and garters. This weaving is no modern invention of the Indians. Nearly all those whom De Soto found inhabiting Florida and Louisiana, on either side of the Mississippi, and who were, in a great measure, an agricultural people, dressed themselves in woven garments made of the lint of the mulberry, the papaw, or the elm; and, in the colder seasons of the year, they wore coverings of feathers, chiefly those of the turkey. The same dresses were still employed in the time of Du Pratz.[200]