Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Aztec mother teaching her daughter to weave.— This shows the type of loom used in the New World cotton area. (Compare page 384). The girl is beating up a pick of weft with a "weave sword" held at right angles to the weft although it was once thought always to have been put in sideways. The partially woven fabric at top of loom shows how the warp threads were separated into equal groups and the weav- ing begun from the bottom up, as in certain unfinished Peruvian cloths found
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The (Jjibway hag loom, the mosi i)rimilive type of loom, consists of two sticks with a string stretched be- tween them. The warp threads depending from the string are free below, and the weft is threaded through with the slender rods at the side. This loom, used in ancient times for other fabrics besides bags, is the same type a.s the Greek, Scandinavian, and probably early Egyptian looms stretched between two upright posts. In ancient times other fabrics besides bags were made on this type of loom. In the narrative of Her- nando de Soto, the Knight of Elvas describes the weaving of tapestry shawls containing white, gray, ver- milion and yellow figures, on such a loom. The fibers used were occasionally of l)uffalo hair, but the com- monest were bast fibers such as silk grass, Indian hemp, and the shredded bark of mulberry and cedar trees. It is singular to note that in the type of loom in which the warp tlireads are at- tached at one end only to a bar or string and at the other end are free, the prin- cipal fiber is bast. The nature of this fiber causes the thread to be much stifi'er and less likely to tangle than cotton. Wool is purposely left out of this generalization, since, while occa- sionally employed as warp, its most general use is as weft. It is upon the character of the warp that the develop- ment and type of loom apparently depend. It must be remembered that a loom is merely a convenience in weaving. The act of interlacing two sets of filaments at right angles can be performed without any tools. Take for example the fabrics of the northern Indians, made from strips of rabbit fur. Here no frame of any description is employed. One set, which we may term the warp, is merely stretched on the ground, and the second set, the weft, is laced each strip in turn over anfl under until the web is com- pleted. It is usual to refer to the type of loom

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