Modern Spinning Apparatus of the Central American Indians.
In the regions of the Gila and Colorado the natives have been little disturbed by Europeans. The Spaniards never extended their iron sway over them, and, like the Araucanians of Peru, they have been supposed to retain many of the customs and arts of their ancestors. This is to some extent true. The country soon after the Conquest was reported to be occupied by a civilized people, who followed agriculture and dwelt in stone houses. Colonel Emory, in his Notes of a Military Reconnaissance, from Fort Leavenworth in Missouri to San Diego in California, including part of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers, (Washington, 1848,) met with remains of stone and adobe houses, scattered over extensive tracts of country—sometimes continued over ten, fifteen, and even twenty miles. The Pecos tribe, he remarks, have preserved alive, till within a few years, the sacred fire that glowed on the ancient altars; nor is it certain that it is not yet preserved, for a few Indians took it with them to the Pueblos of Zuni. The name of Montezuma is said to be as familiar to those Indians, to the Apaches, Navajos, and others, as that of Washington is to us.
"Turning from some old ruins towards the Pimos village," says Colonel Emory, "we urged our guide to go fast, as we wished to see as much of his people as the day would permit. We were at once impressed with the beauty and order of the arrangements for irrigating and draining the land. Corn, wheat, and cotton are the crops of this peaceful and intelligent people. All the crops have been gathered in, and the stubbles show that they have been luxuriant. The cotton has been picked and stacked for drying on the tops of the sheds. The fields are subdivided by ridges of earth into rectangles of about 200 x 100 feet for the convenience of irrigating. The fences are stakes wattled with willow and mezquite, and in this particular set an example of economy in agriculture worthy to be followed by the Mexicans, who never use fences at all." The thatched houses of the Pimos are dome-shaped, and of wicker work, about six feet high, and from twenty to fifty feet in diameter. In front is usually a large arbor, on the top of which cotton in the pod is piled for drying.
A Pimos spinster was observed at work. Her apparatus was more simple than that in the preceding figures, but closely allied to them; in fact the same, with the exception of the calabash or basket, for which a more ready substitute, one always ready, was adopted. "A woman was seated on the ground under the shade of one of the cotton-sheds; her left leg was tucked under her, and her foot was turned sole upwards; between her big toe and the next was a spindle about eighteen inches long, with a single fly of four or six inches; now and then she gave it a twist in a dexterous manner, and at its end was drawn a coarse cotton thread. Such was their spinning jenny." This application of the toes is like that practised by the wives and daughters of the Hindoo weavers: the axles of their light cane reels are thus held when winding off the thread. The foot however is in front of its owner, and in a natural position, nor does the stick grasped by the toes revolve.
The Pimos and Maricopas are in their habits, agriculture, religion, and manufactures, the same.
Indians Spinning Coarse Thread.
A process of undoubted antiquity, and occasionally followed by modern Indians, is shown in the above engraving. The spinner holds in the left hand, horizontally, a short piece of hollow reed or cane, within which the spindle is twirled by the fingers and thumb of the right hand. Sometimes a cross stick or handle is attached, as represented in the figure. A second person performs the part of a distaff, which, as the thread lengthens, recedes from the spinner, or the spinner from it. A section of this primitive apparatus is separately portrayed.
Mr. Van—a delegate now in Washington from the Cherokee nation, to obtain a settlement of claims on the United States for their lands in Georgia, Alabama, &c.—states that the large old spinning-wheel has, to his knowledge, been in the possession of the Cherokees nearly fifty years. His mother, a Creek, and over a hundred years of age, he believes, used to spin with it in her youth. Mr. Van has seen Indians twist coarse thread with apparatus like that here represented, and which in all probability formed one of the contrivances that slowly led to the whirling spindle, in both hemispheres.
