The fourth stage is that of the true or complete loom. In America the loom is intimately associated with the cultivation of cotton. The two have the same distribution, except for some use of the plant for the twining of hammocks on a half-loom in portions of the Tropical Forest area. Disregarding this case as a probable part adaptation of a higher culture trait to a lower culture, we may define the distribution of both loom and cotton as restricted to the Middle American areas, the adjacent Southwest, and perhaps the adjacent Antilles. This is certainly central.
The fifth stage is the loom with a handle or mechanical shedding device, obviating tedious hand picking of the weft in and out of the warps. The heddle is proved only for Peru. It was probably used in Mexico. It may therefore be tentatively assumed to have been known also in the intervening Chibcha area. It is used to-day in the Southwest, but may have been introduced there by the Spaniards. This stage accordingly is limited even more strictly to the vicinity of Middle America.
The sixth stage, that of the loom whose heddles are operated by treadles, and what may be considered a seventh, the use of multiple heddles to work patterns mechanically, were never attained by any American people.
The best and finest fabrics were made in Peru, in part probably as consequence of the addition of wool to the previous repertory of cotton. This addition in turn probably followed the domestication of the llama by the Peruvians. The Mexicans had no corresponding animal to tame, and their textiles lagged behind in quality.
188. Progress in Spinning: Cotton
Spinning and weaving are interdependent. Baskets are made of woody rods, cane splints, root fibers, or straws, all untwisted, but it is probable that the ability to twist cordage is about equally old as basketry. At any rate there is no American people ignorant of cord making. The materials are occasionally sinews, more frequently bast—that is, bark fibers. These are rolled together, almost invariably two at a time, between the palm and the naked thigh. Cordage is used for the second and third stages of weaving. The cotton employed in loom weaving does not spin well by this rolling method. It was therefore spun by being twisted between the fingers, the completed thread being wound on a spindle. This spindle served primarily as a spool or bobbin. In the Old World the distaff has been used for thousands of years. This is a spindle with a whorl or flywheel. It is dropped with a twirl, giving both twist and tension to the loose roving of linen or wool and thus converting it into yarn by a mechanical means. The New World never fully utilized this device. The Southwest to-day uses the wheeled spindle, but evidently as the result of European introduction. Old Mexican pictures and modern Maya photographs show the spindle stood in a bowl, not dropped. The whorl which it possessed was therefore little more than a button to keep the thread from slipping off the slender spindle. For Peru this is established. Thousands of spindles have been found there, normally with whorls too small and light to serve as an effective flywheel. It may then be concluded that all American spinning was essentially by hand; which is in accord with the absence from all America of any form of the wheel. The Indian spinning methods were only two: thigh rolling for bast, finger twisting for cotton.
The origin of the higher forms of spinning and weaving in Middle America is confirmed by the tropical origin of cotton, on which these developments depend. The cotton of the Southwest, for instance, was introduced from Mexico as a cultivated plant. It is derived by some botanists from a Guatemalan wild species. This may well have been the first variety to be cultivated in the hemisphere.