spinning complex, which we have closely associated with cotton. The chances are, therefore, that this whole loom complex spread as a unit.
The distribution of downward weaving will repay further study. Thus in the Aleutian Islands flexible baskets are woven suspended, and the Ojibway and other Central Algonkin tribes wove flexible wallets and soft bags in the same way. This, with the Chilkat blanket, gives us a broad sweep across the continent. In the main, too, this region is also the area of spinning without a spindle.
Turning aside for a moment, we find a peculiar type of sagebrush bark weaving in the plateaus among the Shoshoni and Salish in which parallel twisted strands are joined by widely separated rows of twined thread in pairs.[1] Among the Kwakiutl and neighboring tribes, cedarbark is used in the same way. A similar technique for bags and mats is found around the Great Lakes and eastward. A few specimens from the Salish suggest that wild goat wool was sometimes treated in a similar fashion.
It appears, then, that north of the area of intense maize culture we have in general a basketry-like basis for weaving, and that when weaving is attempted with twisted elements, it is with suspended warp as for baskets and mats. Consistent with this is the rarity of the spindle.
Our problem is not simple, however, because among the modern Salish we find a frame for weaving coarse wool blankets.[2] This may have been introduced by whites, but as the batten and shedding devices are absent and the weave is downward, we still have one of the weaving characteristics of the area. Very widely spread is the weaving of blankets from twisted strips of rabbit fur, a method which has a continuous distribution from Yucatan northward in Mexico and thence over the great plateau area of the United States to Canada where it traverses about the whole of the caribou area and reaches far down into the eastern maize area. This blanket is usually woven on a frame, but also without a batten or shedding device. The similarities between the Salish goat wool blanket and the rabbitskin blanket are so striking that
