Shell-mounds of another class, but similar in general character, occur along the banks of most of the fresh-water streams of the Southern States. They are largely composed of the shells of the fresh-water mus sel, which was prized both as food and as yielding the pearls used for ornaments; these mounds are not less rich in relics than those of the coast. Neither of these classes, however, indicates an antiquity greater than that of the tribes of Indians resident in the localities at the period of the Discovery.
Textile the relics exhumed from the mounds of the Ohio Valley the remains of a textile material bear witness to the com parative cultivation of the ancient people who constructed them. This material is commonly called "mound cloth." The fabric appears to be composed of some vegetable fibre which had been submitted to the pro cesses of rotting and heckling similar to those still applied in the prep aration of flax. The cloth is not merely plaited, as are many of the specimens from the lacustrine villages of Switzerland, but the thread is uniform in size and regularly spun, and the pieces were woven with a warp and woof. Several modes of weaving have been recognized; some times the warp and the woof intersect alternately, at other times the weft is wound around the warp.
This industry must have been active, for surprising quantities of this cloth have been found in the mounds, usually in a half-charred condition, as if it had been thrown in masses on the funeral pyre. From the speci mens, the fabric was generally coarse, about like our sail-cloth. Occa sionally remnants of fringes and tassels are visible. (Comp. pp. 46, 47, and pl. 4, figs. 54, 9o.) Spinning and art of and weaving, though not known to the northern tribes, was perfectly familiar to those who inhabited the Gulf States at the time of the settlement of .the country. They employed a fibre obtained by rotting and heckling the stalks of the wild hemp, and occasionally animal fibre from the coarse hair of the buffalo. These they wove into rugs or mats and articles of clothing. They were dyed in brilliant colors and often ornamented with feathers. A similar industry is still retained by the tribes of New Mexico and Arizona.
Paints and Painting love of color, observable in some of the lower animals (see Vol. I. p. 119), is well marked in even the least cultivated tribes, and we find the mixing and applying of paints one of their prominent arts. Spread in varied designs and hues on the face and body, or displayed on skins and other articles of clothing, the colors employed often had widely-recognized significations and marked the character and rank of the wearer. (See Vol. I. p. 124.) The native Americans were acquainted with a wide range of paints and dyes, some derived from the vegetable, sonic from the mineral world.
In the United States the blood-root, the sumac, the walnut, and the poke berry were esteemed for their coloring juices; and the list could be much extended. The mineral kingdom offered especially the iron colors. They were obtained from nodules or from the colored clays, red, blue, or black, which crop out along the banks of various streams. The name "Paint Creek," applied to various streams in different States in the Union, is generally a reminder of the days when the native hunter was wont to repair to the banks of such streams in order to provide himself with the colored clays he esteemed so highly.
Mortars or Iirni-Cllps.—The clays, and the oxide of iron obtained from geodes or from other sources, were thoroughly triturated in small mortars, and often mixed with grease, so that they would remain longer on the surface to which they were applied. These mortars are known as "paint cups." They were usually formed of a pebble from two to four inches in diameter, with a natural depression on one side, which was artificially enlarged by pecking. Small pestles for mixing the paint are found with them, and these are sometimes called "mullers;" but this name is more properly reserved for those broad and fiat-bottomed stones which were used for triturating and rubbing the paint on a plane surface before it was mixed in the mortar. Such mullers will be found in almost all col lections of stone implements from the Ohio Valley.
Small mortars or paint-cups of this character are very rare in New England, less so on the Atlantic coast to the south, and more frequent on the Pacific coast, especially in California, where the natives were acquainted also with the employment of cinnabar as a coloring material. Some of the paint-cups from the latter region are of serpentine or steatite, and are carved with great accuracy.
of the subjects on which the native painters exercised their skill was the delineation, on the smooth surfaces of rocks, of various figures similar in design to the rock-inscriptions described on page 75. These rock-paintings were preferably in caverns or similar localities where they would be protected from the weather. Several have been discovered in the caves of Tennessee and Kentucky, and they are frequent in the dry mountain-ravines of Arizona, New Mexico, and South ern California. We may fairly assume that most of these drawings con veyed to the associates of the artist some definite meaning, which we may yet be able to ascertain by a study of the principles of pictography.
Colors on Pollery.—The colors given to pottery were either laid on after the firing, in which case they were often of vegetable origin, or they were produced by mixing colored clays with water to the consistence of a thin paste, which was then applied and burned with the body of the vessel.