Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

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.

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.

For the next two illustrations of spinning, by the Navajoes, Camanches, and other tribes of New Mexico, the Patent Office is indebted to Judge Peters, of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We have here another instance in which the thread-making idea has manifested itself among the red race, and a very interesting one. The spinner has a small stick, which she holds horizontally in one hand, and on it winds the thread, as on a spindle, as fast as it is spun. The bunch of cotton is itself twirled round by means of a short and small rod, passed through the lower part, with its ends projecting. A pebble is commonly fastened to the middle of this stick (_d_), and serves as a fly to keep up the motion, and assist, by its weight, in drawing out the thread. To keep the stone and stick in their places, a piece of yarn is wound loosely round the bunch. The length of thread is seldom over six or eight inches, before it is wound on the stick. In this singular process, the classical mode is completely reversed--the spindle, or that which corresponds to it, is held at rest, and the distaff put in motion, in which respect the operation is unique. The idea of increasing the momentum of the whirling mass by the introduction of a weight into its centre is here realized.

In the case illustrated below, two pieces of board or shingle are pinned to opposite sides of the fork of a small tree or stump. A spindle (a smooth rod ten or twelve inches in length) is passed through, and made to turn in them, as in two journals. See the section S, where _a_, _a_ is the spindle and _b_, _b_, the boards, and _c_ a pin to keep the spindle in its place. To whirl the spindle, a cross stick, _d_, is tied to the large end. Sometimes a stone is folded in a piece of cloth, and fastened to each end of the cross stick, which answers the purpose of a rude flywheel. When a suitable stick, having a branch at right angles, can be procured, the cross stick and spindle are of one piece, as at S. A notch is made at the small end of the spindle, where the thread unites to it, and thus, while one girl turns the spindle, another, with a bunch of loose cotton, supplies it, and, as the thread lengthens, gradually recedes from it. As soon as a full length is twisted, it is wound round the spindle, another length is added, and so on, till the spindle is fully charged. The thread is then wound off into a hank, and the spindle set again for working.

These illustrations of primitive art possess a deeper and a more extensive interest than that of their relation to a few Indian tribes; they are types of thought, more or less common to the species, to barbarous and semi-civilized people of all times; such as we ourselves would adopt, were we thrown on our own resources, without any knowledge or recollection on the subject.

It is difficult to determine from this figure whether the shuttle was developed in ancient Mexico. It is not represented, and appears not to have existed any more than the distaff. The loom is like those now used by American Indians. Colonel Emory, after speaking of the Pimos spinning, says, "Led on by this primitive display, I asked for their loom, by pointing to the thread and then to the blanket girded about the woman's loins. A fellow stretched in the dust, sunning himself, rose up leisurely, and untied a bundle, which I had supposed to be a bow and arrow. This little package with four stakes in the ground, was his loom, and he stretched his cloth and commenced the process of weaving. He had no shuttle, the warp being passed across the woof, a thread at a time, by a long wooden needle. One of the rods in the preceding figure is doubtless designed to represent a needle, and was used in the same way." If the figures here introduced truly indicate the progress made by the Aztecs in spinning and weaving, their advance was very moderate; and though very creditable work might be made with this weaving apparatus, by individual skill and patience, it would seem that few or no attempts had been made to render it more facile and efficient. The same remark is, however, applicable to the looms of Asia and Africa. It is worth noting, that the dress of females, pictured above, indicates a decided improvement on that of less civilized tribes. Aztec women and girls wore pantalettes, and a species of tunic, with short sleeves and ornamental borders, not unlike the Chinese female costume, except in the shortness of the sleeves. Amulets or keepsakes, suspended over the neck and resting on the bosom, seem also to have been common.

Modern Peruvian Indians spin without the distaff, and their loom is precisely like the ancient one just represented--the shuttle, or what answers the purpose of one, being a long thorn needle, which is passed through the woof, thread by thread. Every piece is woven of the precise width wanted, whether for garments, cocoa-bags, or any thing else, with no waste by cutting. Ancient specimens of cloth, of excellent execution, have been found in their tombs. The length of the needles varies with the width of the piece to be woven.

That very fine fabrics were produced in Old Mexico, and by implements little if at all better than those here figured, is doubtless true. The highly colored accounts by the conquerors are believed to have been fully warranted by the fineness of the goods which they saw. Indeed, some of the richest of modern shawls and dresses, turned out of the looms of Persia, Egypt, and Hindostan, are but a degree superior to those of the Aztecs. Personal tact and skill are every thing with semi-civilized artisans. The ancient spindle and loom of the East, singularly enough, are still preserved and used for special purposes in modern Rome, just as they were thirty or forty centuries ago. A recent writer on the Pallium (an ecclesiastical robe of lamb's wool) says, there stands about a mile outside the Porta Pia, on the road to Tivoli, an old convent of nuns, attached to the still more ancient church of St. Agnes; that these nuns are poor, and rarely receive any of Rome's high-born damsels to their lonely and neglected cloister; but that they have a small paddock appendant to the monastery, and therein keep a couple of sacred lambs, (not necessarily of the Merino breed,) and are proud and happy ministrants of their wool for the texture of this noble decoration, spinning it, not by any new-fangled jennies, but on the old patriarchal spindle, and weaving it in a loom of which the pattern might date from the days of Penelope.

In conclusion, we may remark, of this subject, that to the substitution of circular for straight motions, and of continuous for alternating ones, may be attributed nearly all the conveniences and elegances of civilized life. It is not too much to assert that the present advanced state of science and the arts is due to revolving mechanism. We may speak of the wonders effected by steam and other motive agents, but of what value would they have been without this means of their employment? The applications of rotary in place of other movements are conspicuous in modern history, from those which propel steamships through the water and locomotives over land, to those which are employed in the manufacture of pins and the pointing of needles. It is by this principle that the irregular motion of the ancient flail and the primeval sieve, has become uniform, in threshing, bolting, and winnowing machines; and hence our circular saws, shears, and slitting mills; the abolition of the mode of spreading out metal into sheets with the hammer, for the more expeditious one of passing it through rollers or flatting mills; and the revolving oars, or paddle wheels, for the propulsion of vessels--the process of inking type with rollers in place of balls, the rotary printing presses, and revolving machines for planing iron and other metals, instead of the ancient process of chipping off superfluous portions with chisels, and that still more tedious of smoothing the surfaces with files. But in few things is the effect of this change of motion more conspicuous than in the modern apparatus for preparing, spinning, and weaving vegetable and other fibres into fabrics for clothing. The simple application of rotary motion to these processes has changed the domestic economy of the world, and increased the general comforts of our race a hundred fold.

The birth of the arts here, and not least among them that of the humble one of spinning, has relation to a problem in American ethnology of great and increasing interest--_the early occupancy or first peopling of this hemisphere_. Were there through countless ages no eyes or hearts here to respond to the smiling heaven, none to taste the teeming fruits or inhale the aroma of flowers? Was the placid atmosphere never moved by the prattle and laughter of children, the songs of birds, or the sudden start of quadrupeds arrested by the presence of the race ordained to rule over them, until a few straggling members of that race arrived (perhaps driven hither by tempests) from abroad, to claim the splendid heritage? If the red man was not indigenous to the soil, if the first settlers were aliens, how natural the desire to know who they were, whence they came, and how, and when, and over what regions extended the first rights of preemption! to ask whether they left no memorials in the languages that have come down to us, in legends, manners, customs, traditions, religious observances and rites, no signs in arts, utensils, arms, or other relics extant? whether they left no marks in earth-works--those most lasting of records--in quarries and entrenchments, in mines, tumuli, and mounds?

It is reasonable to suppose--and difficult to suppose otherwise--that if no human form was ever reflected from the surfaces of these lakes and rivers, no human voice heard in these forests, the imprint of no human foot left on these sands, until colonized from another continent, the arts of that continent must have been considerably advanced before the means of transport, or inducements to emigrate, were evolved; and under any circumstances, a knowledge of the most essential, would be brought over. Of these, such as related to domestic habits and the occupations of women, would be prominent, and among these spinning most of all. When once introduced, this art could not have been lost, indispensable as it is to the savage and demi-savage condition, and the original process or processes, whencesoever derived, unless superseded by better, would have been continued by every generation.

Now, if the mothers of the American race came from any of the early advanced sections or outskirts of Eastern civilization, they brought the distaff and spindle with them, yet nothing of the kind was found at the conquest. It cannot of course be imagined that they, or their descendants, could have been induced to throw the former away, and to embarrass the movements of the latter in a calabash or basket. Efficient previous practice, and acquired habits and expertness, could never have been laid aside for such rude, and laborious, and unproductive substitutes. We know that the distaff and spindle have never been lost where once known, in the old world. Neither civil commotions or revolutions, nor duration of time, affected them, in Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Italy, Carthage, Persia, Scythia, Asia-Minor, or any of the great or small theatres of past history. The laws, learning, science, arts, and races, which once flourished in those countries, have mostly vanished, but women still spin there as they did thirty or forty centuries ago; and so it is here also. The principal mechanical devices of the old Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Peruvians, Chilians, &c., are no longer known; the means by which the stone architecture, the basaltic and porphyritic sculptures of Cusco, Uxmal, Copan, Palenque, and other Aztec remains scattered over the continent, were achieved, are a puzzle; yet the household labors of Indian women in those lands remain unchanged, they spin and weave with the same apparatus, and embroider, as did their kindred in and before the times of Atahualpa and Montezuma.

Admitting that repeated emigrations took place at periods remote as that of the Iliad, and up to the twelfth century of our era, that arrivals, designed or fortuitous, thus occurred, on either the Atlantic or the Pacific, or both coasts--we might still more confidently expect to find the distaff and spindle of the other hemisphere domiciled in this. If they were brought at all, it was in hands practiced in their use, and tenacious of their worth. But from the Cape of Storms in the south, to the limits of human abodes in the north, instead of these the most awkward contrivances prevailed when the whites came, and such still are found to prevail. The inference therefore seems inevitable that the first colonists, and their successors for many ages, came before spinning was known in their native places, or at least before the distaff had been added to the spindle; and that the art, as practised by the Aztecs and their successors in Central America at the present day, is purely of aboriginal development, and of remote antiquity, and had not before the Conquest come in contact with the better processes of the other hemisphere.

Of the three epochs of human condition indicated by the materials of which economical implements and weapons have been made--stone, bronze, and iron--it is uncertain whether the distaff was ever developed under the first. The probabilities are that it was not. In the remote periods in which it is mentioned, some of those who possessed it had advanced far into the second, and some had entered on the third. The great mass of the occupants of this hemisphere at the time of the Conquest were toiling in the cycle of stone; while the Mexicans and Peruvians, the most advanced of the red nations, had discovered and applied the properties of copper and some of its alloys: had entered on the second, but had not progressed far into it. Had they possessed bronze weapons equal to those of the heroic ages, they might yet have preserved, in a measure, their independence and nationality.

Clothing is second only to food, and the clothing of nations in any degree civilized is of woven thread. The all but paramount importance of the manufacture of thread materials--including that made of flax, silk, cotton, worsted, and other fibrous materials--affords matter for great surprise. Compare the products of the distaff and spindle of old with that of our mills, and how difficult to realize the change which modern mechanism has wrought! The yearly amount, the lineal extent, of thread now made--who can measure it? It would reach from our planet to the planets in the farthest regions of space, and almost suffice for a net-work to include the whole system. Turn from the wood-cut illustrations here given of ancient and not yet obsolete processes, to modern manufactures, and it would seem that while in the space of time which it took Grecian Helens, Syrian Naahmahs, or Mexican Penelopes, to prepare an annual supply of clews for their families, the myriads of spindles now twirling, by steam and water, produce enough to use the Asteroids as balls on which to wind it and as bobbins from which to reel it. Even a century ago, a single mill, driven by water, is said to have spun or reeled 73,726 yards of silk--_i.e._, between forty and fifty miles--at each revolution of the motive axle.

Patent Office, Washington, September, 1851.

ORIGINAL POEMS BY BARRY CORNWALL AND W. C. BENNETT.[8]

TO THE AUTHOR OF EOTHEN.

If I may choose (out of our travelled bands)
Friend or companion to make bright, the way;
Or draw the grandeur out from Orient lands,
Where Libanus mounts up and meets the day;
Or face, midst trackless, boundless, burning sands,
The Desert Silence--as it pants for prey;
Be thou (oh Author of Eothen), mine;
Who show'st whate'er the region, stern or gay,
Whate'er the scene--life, death, sublime decay,
For all fine things, and apprehension fine.
'Tis well to ride abroad on the untamed waves;
To shoot the desert with the camel's speed;
To muse o'er discrowned Egypt's wondrous graves,
And trace her story downwards, deed by deed;
Yet, half the lustre of our life were hid,
Our travel idle, meditation nought,
Without such friend in give back thought for thought,
From waste and sea, mountain and pyramid.

BARRY CORNWALL.

ARIADNE.

Morn rose on Naxos,--golden dewy morn,
Climbing its eastern cliffs with gleaming light,
Purpling each inland peak and dusky gorge
Of the gray distance,--morn, on lowland slopes,
Of olive-ground and vines and yellowing corn,
Orchard and flowery pasture, white with kine,
On forest, hillside cot, and rounding sea,
And the still tent of Theseus by the shore.
Morn rose on Naxos--chill and freshening morn,
Nor yet the unbreathing air a twitter heard
From eave or bough,--nor yet a blue smoke rose
From glade or misty vale, or far-off town;
One only sign of life, a dusky sail,
Stole afar across the distant sea,
Flying; all else unmoved in stillness lay
Beneath the silence of the brightening heavens,
Nor sound was heard to break the slumbrous calm,
Save the soft lapse of waves along the strand.
A white form from the tent,--a glance,--a cry.
Where art thou, Theseus?--Theseus! Theseus! where?
Why hast thou stolen thus with earliest dawn,
Forth from thy couch--forth from these faithless arms,
That even in slumber should have clasped thee still!
Truant! ah me! and hast thou learnt to fly
So early from thy Ariadne's love!
Where art thou? Is it well to fright me thus,----
To scare me for a moment with the dread
Of one abandoned! Art thou in the woods
With all that could have told me where thou art!
Cruel! and couldst thou not have left me one,
Ere this to have laughed away my idle fears!
He could have told thee all--the start--the shriek----
The pallid face, with which I found thee gone,
And furnished laughter for thy glad return;
But thus! to leave me, cruel! thus alone!
There is no sound of horns among the hills,
No shouts that tell they track or bay the boar.
O fearful stillness! O that one would speak!
O would that I were fronting wolf or pard
But by thy side this moment! so strange fear
Possesses me, O love! apart from thee;
The galley? gone? Ye Gods! is it not gone?
Here, by this rock it lay but yesternight.
Gone! through this track its keel slid down by the shore;
And I slept calmly as it cleft the sea.
Gone? gone? where gone?--that sail! 'tis his! 'tis his!
Return, O Theseus! Theseus! love! return!
Thou wilt return. Thou dost but try my love?
Thou wilt return to make my foolish fears
Thy jest. Return, and I will laugh with thee!
Return! return! and canst thou hear my shrieks,
Nor heed my cry! And wouldst thou have me weep,
Weep! I that wept--white with wild fear--the while
Thou slew'st the abhorred monster! If it be
Thou takest pleasure in these bitter tears,
Come back, and I will weep myself away----
A streaming Niobe--to win thy smiles!
O stony heart! why wilt thou wring me thus!
O heart more cold unto my shrilling cries
Than these wild hills that wail to thee, return,
Than all these island rocks that shriek, return.
Come back! Thou seest me rend this blinding hair;
Hast thou not sworn each tress thou didst so prize,
That sight of home, and thy gray father's face,
Were less a joy to thee, and lightlier held!
Thy sail! thy sail! O do my watery eyes
Take part with thee, so loved! to crush me down!

Gone! Gone! and wilt thou--wilt thou not return?
Heartless, unfearing the just Gods, wilt thou,
Theseus! my lord! my love! desert me thus!
Thus leave me, stranger in this strange wild land,
Friendless, afar from all I left for thee,
Crete, my old home, and my ancestral halls,
My father's love, and the remembered haunts
Of childhood,--all that knew me--all I knew----
All--all--woe! woe! that I shall know no more.
Why didst thou lure me, craftiest, from my home?
There if, thy love grown cold, thou thus hadst fled,
I had found comfort in fond word and smiles
Familiar, and the pity of my kin,
Tears wept with mine--tears wept by loving eyes,
That had washed out thy traces from my heart,
Perchance, in years, had given me back to joy.
O that thy steps had never trodden Crete!
O that these eyes had never on thee fed!
O that, weak heart! I ne'er had looked my love.
Or looking, thou hadst thrust it back with hate!
Did I not save thee? I? was it for this,
Despite Crete's hate--despite my father's wrath,
Perchance to slay me, that I ventured all
For thee--for thee--forgetting all for thee!
Thou know'st it all,--who knows it if not thou,
Save the just Gods--the Gods who hear my cry,
And mutter vengeance o'er thy flying head,
Forsworn! And, lo! on thy accused track
Rush the dread furies; lo! afar I see
The hoary AEgeus, watching for his son,
His son that nears him still with hastening oars,
Unknown, that nears him but to dash him down,
Moaning, to darkness and the dreadful shades
The while, thy grief wails after him in vain:
And, lo, again the good Gods glad my sight
With vengeance; blood again, thy blood, I see
Streaming;--who bids Hippolytus depart
But thou--thou, sword of lustful Phaedra's hate
Against thy boy--thy son--thy fair-haired boy;
I see the ivory chariot whirl him on----
The maddened horses down the rocky way
Dashing--the roaring monster in their path;
And plates and ivory splinters of the car,
And blood and limbs, sprung from thee, crushed and torn,
Poseidon scatters down the shrieking shores;
And thou too late--too late, bewail'st in vain.
Thy blindness and thy hapless darling's fate.
And think'st of me, abandoned, and my woe;
Thou who didst show no pity, to the Gods
Shrieking for pity, that my vengeful cries
Drag thee not down unto the nether gloom,
To endless tortures and undying woe.
Dread Gods! I know these things shall surely be!
But other, wilder whispers throng my ears,
And in my thought a fountain of sweet hope
Mingles its gladness with my lorn despair.
Lo! wild flushed faces reel before mine eyes.
And furious revels, dances, and fierce glee,
Are round me,--tossing arms and leaping forms.
Skin-clad and horny-hoofed, and hands that clash
Shrill cymbals, and the stormy joy of flutes
And horns, and blare of trumpets, and all hues
Of Iris' watery bow, on bounding nymphs,
Vine-crowned and thyrsus-sceptred, and one form,
God of the roaring triumph, on a car
Golden and jewel-lustred, carved and bossed,
As by Hephaestus, shouting, rolls, along,
Jocund and panther-drawn, and through the sun,
Down, through the glaring splendor, with wild bound,
Leaps, as he nears me, and a mighty cup,
Dripping, with odorous nectar, to my lips
Is raised, and mad sweet mirth--frenzy divine
Is in my veins--hot love burns through mine eyes,
And o'er the roar and rout I roll along,
Throned by the God, and lifted by his love
Unto forgetfulness of mortal pains,
Up to the prayers and praise and awe of earth.

W. C. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] By the kindness of a friend these fine poems are printed for the first time in _The International Magazine_.

A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[9]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.