To the thong of the neck or collar may be suspended a beast’s skin, and you have it then transformed into a mantle. Among the Fuegians this piece of skin is so scanty that they are obliged to turn it about according to the direction of the wind in order to protect the body effectually (Fig. [48]). The thong of the waist, the girdle, was likewise laden with different appendages, and became transformed into a skirt. The leafy branches which the Veddahs push under their belt, the pieces of bark upheld by the belt among the Niam-Niams, the Indo-Malayan “sarong” (Figs. [126] and [146]), which combines the functions of a skirt and a belt,—these are all merely the prototype of the skirt.
Space fails us to show in detail how the other ornaments and garments have sprung from these humble beginnings. How from the bracelet proceeded the ring; how the stone, the twisted tooth, the perforated shell (Figs. [53] and [152]) replaced the thongs in this class of ornament; how, when once metals became known, gold and silver plates, hollow and solid rings in gold, silver, copper, or iron (Figs. [112] and [158]), brass wire rolled several times around the neck and the limbs, were substituted for thongs of skin, blades of grass, and shell beads. The inlaying of precious stones has transformed ornament. The wearing of massive metal becomes uncomfortable even in the climate of the tropics; in certain countries of Africa, rich ladies of fashion have slaves specially employed in emptying pots of water over the spiral-shaped bracelets which coil around the whole arm or leg and become excessively hot in the sun (J. G. Wood).
It is necessary, however, to say a few words about the fabrication of stuffs and the making of garments.
The skins of animals—ox, sheep, reindeer, horse, seal, dog, eland, etc.—were used at first just as they were. Then men began to strip off the hair when there was no necessity to protect themselves from cold, soaking the skin in water, to which they added sometimes cinders or other alkaline substances. This is still the method adopted by the Indians of the far west to obtain the very coarse and hard ox-hide for their tents. But if they wish to utilise it for garments, or if they have to deal with the skin of the deer, they scrape it afterwards with stone or metal scrapers, cut it into half the thickness and work it with bone polishers to render it more supple.[207] Tanning comes much later among half-civilised peoples (like the ancient Egyptians, etc.). Apart from the mammals, few animals have furnished materials for the dress of man;[208] the famous mantles and hats of birds’ feathers so artistically worked by the Hawaiians and the ancient Mexicans were only state garments, reserved for chiefs; clothes of salmon skin, prepared in a certain way, have not passed beyond the territory of a single tribe, the Goldes of Amoor; the fish-bladder waterproofs of the Chukchi are only fishing garments. On the other hand, the number of plants from which garments may be made is very great. Several sorts of wood supply the material of which boots are made (the sabot in France and Holland). The bark of the birch is utilised also for plaited boots (“lapti” of the Russians and Finns), the bark of several tropical trees, almost in its natural state or scarcely beaten, is employed as a garment by the Monbuttus, the Niam-Niams, the tribes of the Uganda, and is characteristic of Zandeh peoples in general; this kind of garment is also found in America (among the Warraus of Guiana and the Andesic tribes). In Oceania the preparation of stuffs from the beaten bark of paper mulberry (Brusonnetia papyrifera) has attained a high degree of perfection, and the “Tapa” of Tahiti with its coloured and printed patterns, the “Kapa” of Hawaii, might enter into competition with woven stuffs.[209]
The latter have been known since remote antiquity. Woven stuffs are found in the pile-dwellings of the bronze age in Europe and in the pyramids of Egypt. But it seems that the plaiting of vegetable fibres and grasses, as it is still practised to-day with esparto grass, must have preceded true weaving. The Polynesians still manufactured, at the beginning of this century, robes plaited with the stems of certain grasses, and plaited straw hats are made by Malays, Indians of North-west America, etc. On the whole, weaving is only plaiting of a finer substance, yarn, which itself is only very thin cord or twine. The process of spinning cord or thread is always the same. In its most primitive form it consists simply in rolling between the palms of both hands, or with one hand on the thigh, the fibres of some textile substance. This is how the Australian proceeds to make a line with his wife’s hair, or the New Zealander when he transforms a handful of native flax, inch by inch, into a perfect cord. The Australian had only to transform into a spindle the little staff with two cross-pieces, on which he rolls up his precious line, to effect a great improvement in his art.[210] In fact, the spindle is a device so well adapted for its purpose that it has come down from the most remote Egyptian antiquity into our steam spinning factories almost without alteration in form. Primitive weaving must have been done at first with the needle, like tapestry or modern embroidery, but soon this wearisome process was replaced by the following arrangement: two series of threads stretched between two staffs which may be alternately raised and lowered half (warp) by means of vertical head-threads attached to wooden sleys; between the gaps of the threads passes the shuttle carrying the woof, which is thus laid successively above and below each thread of the warp. This is the simplest weaving-loom.
The dyeing of thread and stuffs by an application of mordants (kaolin especially) is known to all peoples acquainted with weaving. Nature supplies colours such as indigo, turmeric, litmus, purple, madder, etc., which are subjected to transformations by being left to steep with certain herbs. The Polynesians were acquainted even with printing on textures by means of fern-fronds or Hibiscus flowers, which they steeped in colour and applied to their “tapa.”
The primitive “tailors” cut their hides or stuffs with flint knives, sewing the pieces together in shoemaker fashion; they made holes with a bone or horn awl and passed through them a thread made of the sinews of some animal, or of woven grass, etc. Sewing with needles is less common among uncultured peoples, but it has been found in Europe from the neolithic period.
FIG. 54.—Method of making stone tools
by percussion; the first blow.
(After Holmes.)