mat-makers. Much variety of character and
appearance was given to the fabric by varying the order of the strands
in intersection. It was a common practice to interweave strands of
different size, shape, or color, thus producing borders and patterns of
no little beauty. Du Pratz thus mentions the use of dyes by the
Louisiana Indians: "The women sometimes add to this furniture of the bed
mats woven of cane, dyed of 3 colours, which colours in the weaving are
formed into various figures."[22] This is well illustrated in the mat
from a rock shelter in Tennessee, later to be described, and the Indians
of the east and north practiced the same art.

Speaking of the ceremony of smoking the calumet among the Iroquois, De
la Potherie says:

The ceremony is held in a large cabin in winter and in summer
in an open field. The place being chosen, it is surrounded
with branches to shade the company. In the center is spread a
large mat of canes dyed in various colors, which serves as a
carpet.[23]

Frequent mention is made of the use of mats in burial. Two brief
extracts will serve to illustrate this use. Butel-Dumont makes the
following statement regarding tribes of the lower Mississippi:

The Paskagoulas and Billoxis do not inter their chief when he
dies, but they dry the corpse with fire and smoke in such a
way that it becomes a mere skeleton. After it is reduced to
this state they carry it to the temple (for they have one as
well as the Natchez) and put it in the place of its
predecessor, which they take from the spot it occupied and
place it with the bodies of the other chiefs at the bottom of
the temple, where they are arranged one after the other,
standing upright like statues. As for the newly deceased, he
is exposed at the entrance of the temple on a sort of altar
or table made of cane and covered with a fine mat very neatly
worked in red and yellow squares with the skin of the
canes.[24]

Brackenridge[25] says that a few years ago, in the state of Tennessee,
"Two human bodies were found in a copperas cave in a surprising state of
preservation. They were first wrapped up in a kind of blanket, supposed
to have been manufactured of the lint of nettles, afterwards with
dressed skins, and then a mat of nearly 60 yards in length."

[17] A Brief and True account of the New Found Land of
Virginia, Thomas Hariot, p. 24.

[18] A Brief and True a