PREFACE.
What would be the civilized man of to-day without the art of weaving the soft art that surrounds his home with comforts and his life with luxuries ? Nay he deems them necessities. Could he do without his woven woollen or cotton underwear, his woven socks, his woven clothing? Where would be his bed linen and blankets, his carpets, his curtains, his portieres ? His every day life is so intimately associated with weaving- that he has ceased to think about it, and yet it is all owing to the work of primitive, aboriginal woman that he is thus favored. For there is not a weave of any kind, no matter how intricate or involved, that the finest looms of England or America produce to-day under the direction of the highest mechanical genius, that was not handed down to us, not in crude form, but as perfect as we now find it, by our savage ancestry in their basketry and kindred work.
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Interest in the arts and industries of our aboriginal tribes has grown so rapidly in recent years, that whereas, twenty years ago, illustrative collections of the products of these arts and industries were confined to the museums of scientific societies, today they are to be found in scores of private homes. This popular interest has created a demand for knowledge as to the peoples whose arts these collections illustrate, and of the customs, social, tribal, medicinal, religious, in which the products of their arts are used.
One of the most common and useful of the domestic arts of the Amerind*[1] is that of basketry. It is primitive in the extreme, is universal, both as to time and location, and as far as we know has changed comparatively little since the days of its introduction. It touches the
- ↑ * This is a new coinage by Major J. W. Powell, of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, to designate the North American aborigine.
