Mats were used not only in and about the dwellings of the aborigines, but it was a common practice to carry them from place to place to sleep on, or for use as seats or carpeting in meetings or councils of ceremonious nature. The latter use is illustrated in a number of the early accounts of the natives. Figure 2, copied from Lafitau, serves to indicate the common practice.
The omnipresent sweat-house of the aborigines is thus described by Smith:
Sometimes they are troubled with dropsies, swellings, aches, and such like diseases; for cure whereof they build a Stone in the forme of a Doue-house with mats, so close that a few coales therein covered with a pot, will make the patient sweat extreamely.[18]
Bartram, speaking of the Seminoles, states that the wide steps leading up to the canopied platform of the council house are "covered with carpets or mats, curiously woven of split canes dyed of various colours."[19]
The use of mats in the mound country in very early times is described by Joutel as follows:
Their moveables are some bullocks' hides and goat skins well cured, some mats close wove, wherewith they adorn their huts, and some earthen vessels which they are very skilful at making, and wherein they boil their flesh or roots, or sagamisé, which, as has been said, is their pottage. They have also some small baskets made of canes, serving to put in their fruit and other provisions. Their beds are made of canes, raised 2 or 3 feet above the ground, handsomely fitted with mats and bullocks' hides, or goat skins well cured, which serve them for feather beds, or quilts and blankets; and those beds are parted one from another by mats hung up.[21]
The mats so much used for beds and carpets and for the covering of shelters, houses, etc., were probably made of pliable materials such as rushes. De la Potherie illustrates their use as beds,[20] one end of the mat being rolled up for a pillow as shown in figure 3.
Fig. 3.—Use of mat in sleeping (after De la Potherie).
The sizes of mats were greatly varied; the smallest were sufficient for seating only a single person, but the largest were many yards in length, the width being restricted to a few feet by the conditions of construction.