| 2716-C | Twisted fibers covered with feathers | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2716-H | Twisted fibers covered with feathers | Asimina triloba |
| 2717-C | Twisted fibers covered with feathers | Asimina triloba |
| 2717-G | Woody material with feathers attached | Asimina triloba |
| 2717-I&E | Twisted fiber mass | Asimina triloba |
| 2718-E | Twisted fiber mass | Asimina triloba |
| 2718-K | Bristle-like vegetable fiber | Nolina georgiana |
| 2719-J | Twisted vegetable fiber | Asimina triloba |
| 2721-A | Mat | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2721-S | Fragment of basketry | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2722-D | Twisted fiber | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2722-I | Twisted fiber covered with feathers | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2724-A | Twisted fiber covered with feathers | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2724-K | Fawn colored string | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2731 | Mat | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2782 | Copper stained rope | Asimina triloba |
| 2781 | Charred basket | Arundinaria tecta |
| 2783 | Fibers adhering to copper sheet | Arundinaria tecta |
A comparison of materials in prehistoric collections reveals an excess of animal materials in the artifacts from Spiro Mound. One gets the impression that in Spiro textiles strings of vegetable fiber are usually surfaced with hair or other animal materials to increase the softness of the product. This may account for the almost exclusive use of canebrake and pawpaw, both relatively coarse fibers used without preliminary treatment. A striking contrast is between the slipshod way of making string and the highly precise fine techniques of covering it with hair and feathers.
SUMMARY
This survey makes no pretension of being complete, but it is an adequate sampling of the fibers utilized by the Eastern Indians and illustrates their resourcefulness in exploiting the raw materials at hand. It is noticeable that they used a great variety of plants and that one of the determining properties or qualifications was the local abundance of a plant. There seems to have been a tendency to use the monocotyledonous plants and the bast from the trees for coarser work and the diocotyledonous herbaceous plants for the manufacture of finer cords and threads.
Several general points of interest are apparent from the comparative study of these prehistoric and historic plant materials.
1. The plant fibers used by the prehistoric people were rarely if ever treated before utilization, while among the modern Indians a high degree of skill has been attained in the preparation of the fibers before spinning.
2. There seems to have been some commercial interchange between the Northern and the Southern tribes, both in historic and prehistoric times. The occurrence of palmetto fibers in modern Mohawk and Potawatomi collections and the use of Nolina by the cave and rock-shelter people of Ohio, shows commerce.
3. It seems that most, if not all, of the materials utilized were wild plants for there was no discoverable evidence of the cultivation of these plants. Such evidence would be far from obvious since cultivation does not seem to improve the fibers in textile plants.