USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Madisonville > Indian Village Site and Cemetery Near Madisonville, Ohio > Part 18
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a
h
f
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WHITE DOG CAVE a, Tablet-like object of stone; b, Neck ornament: c, d, e, Shell pendants; f, g, Object of stone; h, Stone pendant; i, Object of mountain-sheep horn; j, k, Hoof rattles. (About }.)
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uniformly i's of an inch. The edges are rounded and all surfaces very smoothly worked down by grinding. The fine finish and the fragile nature of this object seem to indicate that it was used as an ornament.
Head Ornaments. An object, of whose function we are not positive, but which was probably used to decorate the hair, was found on the breast of mummy 2, Cist 27 (plate 18, b). It con- sists of five neatly made bone pins, each 5} inches long and a little less than } of an inch in diameter, fastened together side by side. The bindings are of sinew; the upper set is overwrapped with fine fiber cord evidently as a finish, since the string, though badly de- cayed, shows traces of a central red band. Projecting from the top, and held by the wrappings just described, were bundles of small feathers, of which only the butts of the quills and traces of the pile now remain.1
Figure a, plate 18, shows a similar ornament from Cist 6, made up of three wooden pins each 10 inches long and } of an inch in diameter. A bundle of six wooden pins, each 8 inches in length and } of an inch thick, possibly ready to be made into a pair of ornaments like the ones just described, is figured in c. A number of finely fashioned but broken bone objects, of about the same size and shape as large knitting needles, some tied up in bundles, others loose, were found in the course of the excavations in White Dog Cave; most of them show signs of long use. These no doubt are also unassembled parts of head ornaments. There are in the 1915 collection similar broken bone pins.2
Just how these contrivances were worn we do not know, but from their comb-like structure we judge that they were probably stuck in the hair, singly or in pairs. Some basis for this belief is found in certain Basket-maker square-shouldered pictographs de- picted with objects which may represent ornaments such as these protruding from their heads.3 In the Peabody Museum there is a Paiute "warrior's plume," made of five wooden pins placed side by side and held together by colored strings woven about them in such a way as to produce a simple pattern; this specimen is not feathered, but is otherwise much like those from White Dog Cave.
1 A fairly well-preserved example from Grand Gulch is in the American Museum of Natural History, New York (cat. no. H-13375).
: Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, plate 86, e.
: Ibid., figure 101.
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In the Coahuila, Mexico, cave collection in the Museum there is an arrangement of six wooden pins which may be either a head ornament or a comb; we are inclined to think the former, as the same collection contains an object that is surely a comb, con- structed in an entirely different manner.
The object shown on plate 18, d, may be an ornament, a pro- jectile for a dart game, or possibly a ceremonial object; it is a thin twig with three small feathers seized to it at their butts and tips by sinew; the ends of the stick are broken off, so that its original length is unknown.
Hair-dressing. Several of the mummies from White Dog Cave are in so good a state of preservation that their heads still retain the hair, dressed, probably, as in life. On plate 19 are illustrated the various methods; figures a, b, c are drawn from mummies, and d, is restored from a scalp found in the same district in 1915.1
Figure a, shows the simplest manner of wearing the hair, which in this case is cropped to an average length of 2 inches. The raggedness of this haircut is apparently the result of gathering to- gether and hacking off a single lock at a time. The individual in question was a female about twenty years of age found in Cist 22 (mummy 2).
Figure b, shows the arrangement of the hair of an adult male from Cist 24. It is parted in the center from forehead to crown and falls loose on either side; that of the back of the head is gathered into a queue, the end of which is turned back on itself and wrapped for a space of 2 inches with a fine string. From the crown there hangs a lock the thickness of a pencil closely wound with string for nearly its entire length.2 The end of this tress is bound up with the end of the queue. Where this lock grows from the scalp, the surrounding hair is clipped away for a little space.
Figure c, is drawn from the head of a male about twenty-five years old, from Cist 22. The hair is arranged as follows: from a strip 1} inches wide straight back from the middle of the forehead the hair has been cut off close to the scalp. This exaggerated " part " terminates at the crown in a circular tonsure in the center of which there is a thin lock of long hair. The hair on either side
1 For pictures of this interesting specimen, and for a description of its preparation, see Kidder- Guernsey, 1919, plates 87, 88, and pp. 190-192.
" As was noted on p. 13, a section of a similar lock wound spirally with a leather cord was found in Cist 6, White Dog Cave.
PEABODY MUSEUM PAPERS
VOL. VIII, No. 2, PLATE 18
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b
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f
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WHITE DOG CAVE a, b, d-g. Feather ornaments; c, Package of wooden pins, probably used in making feather ornaments. (About }.)
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of the " part " is gathered together and tightly bound 3} inches from the ends with fine human hair string; these tresses hang in front of the ears. The back hair, which is about 14 inches long, is similarly gathered together and bound near the end for a space of 2 inches. The lock from the center of the tonsure is included in this binding.
The following description of the scalp shown in d, is quoted from Our previous report : 1 " A ' part ' 1 inch wide, from which the hair has been clipped, runs up to a large semilunar tonsure at the crown. The brow tresses on either side are gathered together in 'bobs' t hat fall in front of or over the ears, and are tied up with wrappings Of apocynum (?) string. The long hair from just behind the ton- sure is braided into a thin plait, the lower end of which is doubled back on itself and bound with hair string. The remainder of the back hair is made into a single short thick ' bob,' string-wrapped, that falls to the nape of the neck." As shown in the drawing this specimen combines features of both figures b and c, but is more elaborate than either. It seems to have been preserved as a trophy and for this reason, when discussing it in the earlier report, we were in doubt as to whether it represented a method of hair- dressing practised by the Basket-makers, or that of some tribe of which we had no knowledge. The side-bobs inclined us to the belief that it was a Basket-maker style, as Basket-maker picto- graphs are often shown with " bobs " on either side of the head. The finds from White Dog Cave serve of course to confirm this idea.
Although many tribes shaved one portion or another of the head, and the thin scalp-lock was not an unusual thing, we can find no reference to analogous coiffures ancient or modern with the ex- ception of those of the Maya thus described by Bishop Landa:
They wore their hair long, like women. On the top they burned a sort of tonsure; they let the hair grow around it, while the hair of the tonsure re- mained short. They bound the hair in braids about the head with the excep- tion of one lock, which they allowed to hang down behind like a tassel."
Judging from our material it would seem that the men dressed their hair more elaborately than did the women.
1 Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, p. 191.
' Schellhas, 1904, p. 617.
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CRADLES AND ACCESSORIES
Rigid Cradles. It seems well, before taking up the several empty cradles in the collection, to describe the one case in which we have the baby with all its wrappings still in place. The bundle is shown as found in plate 4, g, and plate 21, c; its different parts are separated and spread out in the other figures of the former plate. The infant, enveloped in robes, is tied in by means of a criss-cross lashing. The binding cord is of human hair, four-ply and 5 feet long (plate 4, i); it is rove through a series of string loops that are attached to the sides of the cradle. The seven stout cords that may be seen hanging loose on the left side of the unwrapped bundle (plate 4, g and plate 21, c), and laid out separately in h, had prob- ably been used for hanging up or transporting the cradle; if the baby had not died so soon (it can hardly be more than a few days old), these cords would undoubtedly have been woven into a regular carrying strap like those shown in plate 23, k, l.
The outermost wrapping is a much tattered remnant of woven cloth (plate 4, a); it is described on page 63. The second cover is a fur-string baby blanket, measuring 17 by 17 inches. The body of the robe is of cords overlaid with strips of rabbit skin, its outer sides have a border, two strands in width, made of string, between the plies of which are caught bunches of long, coarse hair, probably dog. We have called coverings of this sort baby blankets because they were obviously woven to their peculiar bifurcated shape for the special purpose of leaving an opening at the place where they would otherwise constantly have been wet and soiled. Inside this blanket there was another of exactly the same size and shape; (plate 4, f) but, because it was to hold the baby itself, much softer and more carefully made. It is also of string, wound with strips of fluffy white fur from the bellies of rabbits. In handling this speci- men, one is so impressed by the freshness of the fur that it is diffi- cult to reconcile its perfect condition to its great antiquity.
The mummy of the infant (plate 4, c) lay on this inner blanket with the lower side-pieces folded over its legs. It was provided with a loose bundle of shredded cedar bark to serve as a diaper (c). On the abdomen, covering the navel, was a pad (d), made of cedar bark sewed up in prairie dog skin, the hair side out. This obviously acted as a binder to prevent rupture. The umbilical
PEABODY MUSEUM PAPERS
VOL. VIII, No. 2, PLATE 19
b
C
Styles of hair dressing as shown by the remains from Basket-maker caves.
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cord itself had been dried and was attached by a string to one corner of the outer baby blanket, so that it hung directly before the face of the infant; 1 it may be seen at the upper right-hand edge of the blanket (b).
The cradle (i) is 14 inches long and 10 inches wide. The frame is a single unpeeled withe, } inch in diameter, bent into an approxi- mate oval. The body is made of fifty straight, unpeeled twigs placed close together; these run transversely and are fastened underneath the frame by a continuous lashing of fiber string. Along each side of the cradle there extends a stout cord, fastened to the hoop at intervals and forming loose loops for the attachinent of the binder that held the baby and its wrappings in place.
This cradle is much the smallest in the collection and is crudely made. It shows none of the careful finish and ornamental features of the specimens about to be described. The uncompleted carrying strap, the roughly put-together umbilical pad and the small size of the baby itself all point to the probability of birth having taken place before the usual elaborate " layette " was ready.
There are five other more or less complete cradles in the collec- tion, all of which were found in White Dog Cave. Four had been buried with babies upon them but disturbance in some cases and decay in others rendered it impossible to recover the " mummy bundles " in their original condition; the fifth cradle was found in rude Cist 54 (plate 5, a) that contained no bones. While these specimens are all much alike in general make-up, they differ con- siderably in details. As no account of a rigid Basket-maker cradle has yet been published, it seems worth while to describe each one of this exceptionally well-preserved lot.
The handsomest cradle is the one illustrated, front and back, in plate 20, a, b. It is 23} inches long, by 14} inches wide at the broadest part. The rim is composed of two trimmed and peeled hardwood sticks } inch in diameter, each bent into a U; the open ends of the two U-shaped pieces are spliced together with their sides overlapping a little; tight ligatures hold them in that position, and so envelop the joined ends that they cannot be seen. The
1 As recorded by Catlin in 1842, Vol. II, p. 133. The custom of preserving the cord as a charm was practised by many tribes, particularly those of the plains. The Ute, Dakota, Ara- paho, and Gros Ventre enclosed the dried cord in more or less elaborate coverings of skin orna- mented with quill or bead work and fashioned usually to represent reptiles. These were hung on the front of the cradle (see Kroeber, 1908, pp. 166, 167).
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body of the cradle is made of two series of slim willow twigs, from which the bark has been scraped. The transverse rods are ninety- nine in number; they are laid as close together as they will fit and are fastened at their ends to the under side of the frame by a con- tinuous figure-eight lashing of yucca string. This binding is over- wrapped with soft fiber, until the slightly protruding ends of the rods are entirely hidden, and each side of the cradle is built up into a soft, bolster-like roll an inch in thickness; this in turn is sewed up in a cover of deer or mountain-sheep hide dressed with the hair on. The hard sides of the hoop and the sharp projecting rod ends are thus completely padded and form a sort of rim along the two edges of the cradle on its upper surface.
The second, or longitudinal, set of rods consists of five twigs running up the middle of the transverse rods and attached to them by a lashing of heavy sinew, so arranged as to produce the zigzag design seen in the photograph. The ends of the longitudinal twigs are fastened to the head and foot of the hoop in some manner which cannot be made out, because the attachment is padded and tightly sewed up in a hide covering.
Tied around the bottom of the hoop there is a horse shoe shaped roll of cedar bark, which must have formed a kind of soft platform for the baby's feet to rest against when the cradle was held up- right. A series of human hair strings are caught into the "bolsters" along the sides of the cradle; these, like the loops on the specimens first described, were to hold the laced binding cord. At the head and foot are much longer loops, designed, apparently, for suspend- ing the cradle in a horizontal position.1
A double yucca string is tightly stretched across the upper surface of the cradle about 8 inches above the foot. From just below this string to the foot, the cradle is much discolored by the excreta of the baby. The purpose of the string was probably to hold in place the rather inefficient diaper-bundles of cedar bark or fiber.
Plate 20, c, d, illustrates a cradle very similar in shape to the above; its measurements, 23} by 14} inches, are almost identical; the hoop is also made of two pieces tied together at the sides. The backing is of reeds instead of twigs; there are eighty-three in the transverse series and twenty-two in the longitudinal, the latter is secured to the former by narrow rawhide thongs whose emergences
1 See Saunders, 1912, photograph facing p. 86.
PEABODY MUSEUM PAPERS
VOL. VIII, No. 2, PLATE 20
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WHITE DOG CAVE a, b, Front and back of cradle, Cist 35; c, d, Front and back of cradle, Cist 54. (About 1/9.)
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produce a pattern of diamond figures. The longitudinal reeds were once attached to the head and foot of the bow, but their ends are now missing. The sides are padded with fiber and covered with hide, and there are the remnants of a cedar-bark foot rest. The ends of a diaper string are present, but there are no side loops for the laced binding cord.
The remaining three specimens are more nearly oval than the two preceding. The largest one (plate 21, b) is 25 inches long by 12 inches wide. Viewed from the side it is rocker-shaped, but this curve is probably due to warping. The frame and its side-padding (mostly decayed) offer no new features, nor does the method of attachment of the seventy-nine transverse willow backing-rods. As will be seen in the plate, the longitudinal rods are differently arranged; they are in two sets of six each, spaced well apart and curving away from each other as they approach the head of the cradle where each set is bent about the side of the frame and tied back on itself; the lower attachments are gone. The diamond- pattern lashings that hold the longitudinal to the transverse rods are of strips of rawhide. Between the two longitudinal sets, and also alongside them, the transverse rods are bound together by a sort of over-eight-under-eight twilling of leather thongs painted red. Side loops and diaper string have disappeared; the mark of the latter, however, can be made out on the backing, and below it there are as usual heavy stains and caked mud.
The cradle shown in plate 21, a, is from the same cist as the fore- going. It is an elongated oval, 19} by 10} inches. Of the two sticks bent to form its frame, the upper one is peeled, the lower unpeeled. The sides are padded into the usual long rolls, but there is no evidence that they were ever encased in skin; no loops or diaper string remain. The transverse twigs are ninety-eight in number; the first seventeen, counting from the top, are in natural color; then comes a row of eight rods dyed black, then eight in natural color, eight black, eight natural, eight black, eight natural, and eight black; the last twenty-five to the bottom are undyed. The eight longitudinal twigs are not attached to the transverse ones by the usual ornamental bindings. They are turned about the frame at the head of the cradle and tied back on themselves; at the bottom they are cut off at the level of the last transverse element and their ends are made fast to it by a row of twined yucca string.
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The last of the three oval cradles is 21} inches long, and 11} inches across. The two sticks of its frame are unpeeled. There are seventy-seven transverse rods (willow twigs, scraped and trimmed as usual) and seven longitudinal ones, bound to the former with the conventional diamond pattern of thong-emergences; their attachments to the top and bottom of the frame have been broken off. The frame padding along the sides is of string and yucca fiber, and was once encased in hide. There are no side-loops, but .the diaper string is still in place, stretched tightly across the upper surface of the cradle at a point one-third of the distance from the head to the foot.
Flexible Cradles. These are of two types. The first has a rim made of a long thin bundle of grass rolled tight, tied with yucca leaves and bent to the same shape as the wooden hoop of the rigid cradle. The body or filling is a rough mesh of yucca leaves. The second type is a sort of mat made from long strips of cedar bark held together by twined-woven rows of yucca leaves; the edges of the mat are turned up and fastened together by a yucca network. Both types are illustrated and more fully described in the report on the 1914-1915 expeditions; 1 all the specimens recovered in 1916-1917 were very fragmentary, but enough of them were found to show that these cradles were in common use.
Umbilical Pads. During the early part of the 1916 season there were taken from the graves of infants a number of flat pads, made by sewing up various substances in covers of prairie dog hide. Their use, at first doubtful, was made clear when the well-preserved baby burial from Cist 13 was examined, and a similar pad (plate 4, d) was found lying against the navel of the infant; a second case (infant from Cist 35) was discovered later. It was then obvious that all these specimens had been used as are our modern " binders" to prevent umbilical hernia by exerting pressure on the navel of the new-born child.
Each of these pads has a light but rigid or semi-rigid core, most commonly made of five or six corncobs cut to equal length and bound together side by side; several examples are whittled from slabs of yellow-pine bark (plate 22, c); ? still others consist of a rope or tight twist of cedar bark, coiled and sewed to itself to form
1 Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, pp. 165, 166; plates 71, b; 72, a, b.
" The piece of bark figured in our first report (Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, plate 85, b), and classed as problematical is one of these.
PEABODY MUSEUM PAPERS
VOL. VIII, No. 2, PLATE 21
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WHITE DOG CAVE a, b, Cradles; c, Cradle containing mummy of child, Cist 18; d, Package containing mummy of child, Cist 35. (About 1/10.)
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A small oval mat (plate 22, b); in one case a thin slab of sandstone is used.1 The crudest were wads of cedar bark or grass. The cores were wrapped and padded with shredded cedar bark, more or less thickly according to their hardness, and were finally enclosed in prairie-dog skin covers prepared as follows (plate 22, a); the com- plete hide was trimmed by cutting away the feet and tail, and shaped into a long bag with the fur outside. The padded core was placed in the bottom of this, the upper part folded down, and the whole neatly sewed up with sinew or fine fiber thread. There is One specimen (plate 31, a) to which is still attached the narrow human hair string band that formerly held it in place against the abdomen of the infant.
BASKETRY
Coiled Basketry. The Basket-maker culture was so named by the Wetherill brothers because of the abundance of baskets found in the graves. The burials of this people excavated by the Pea- body Museum expeditions in Marsh Pass ran true to type in this respect as in all others; and, wherever the cists were protected from moisture and undisturbed by ancient looters, fine specimens were always to be found, while throughout the general digging in the caves fragments of worn-out baskets were encountered in great abundance.
All the specimens recovered were of the coiled variety, no case of twining, checkerwork, or wickerwork having been found; a single twilled example, in reality more like a flexible pouch than a true basket, will be described later. In weave the coiled baskets form a very homogeneous group; they are made over a foundation consisting of two slim osiers laid side by side, with a padding or welt of yucca fiber or shredded roots. The sewing elements are wooden splints averaging a little less than } inch wide; they enclose the rods and the fibrous padding bundle and also pass through about half of the bundle of the coil below. It is this gripping of the bundle of the lower coil which alone holds the fabric together, as the stitches of one coil never interlock with those of the coil below them.' While the weave is so solid and compact that many of the
1 For a description of this specimen see Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, p. 192; its use was then unknown to us.
" For s diagram of the weave, see Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, figure 80.
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better pieces must have been watertight, it never attains the fine- ness of texture seen in many California coiled baskets. These ancient weavers strove, apparently, for strength and serviceability rather than for refinement of technic. No more stitches than necessary were used; hence the relatively great width of the in- dividual sewing splints and their broad spacing, which allows the foundation to appear between them. The average tray basket has five coils to the inch and nine to eleven stitches along each inch of coil; the finest specimen has eight coils and twelve stitches; the coarsest, a fragment from a large pannier, has coils } inch wide and six to seven stitches to the inch of coil. The edge bindings of all the baskets save one are in simple wrapping; the exception is a bowl-shaped piece (plate 23, i) in which the entire rim is finished in " false-braid " as in Navajo baskets.1
Our specimens fall into the following five classes:
1. Trays
4. Water baskets
2. Bowls
3. Carrying baskets
5. Trinket baskets
Trays. This is by far the commonest type. The examples are very flat, and run from 12 to 24 inches in diameter. They were probably used for the serving of food, and perhaps in gambling. One tray (plate 23, j) obviously had another purpose; about its rim at equal distances apart were four loops, two of which remain (the others were in place when found, but soon crumbled away). Each loop is made of a twig tied into a circle 2 inches in diameter and is attached to the rim of the basket by a short buckskin thong. The whole interior of the tray shows much wear, particularly severe at the bottom where, indeed, it had begun to give out and was re- enforced by overstitching with new splints, which themselves were partly worn through. The outside and bottom exhibit no wear at all. It seems likely that this basket was suspended by the loops and used for the simultaneous hulling and winnowing of seeds too delicate to be shelled in a mortar. The process might have been to keep a stone rolling among the seeds by shaking the suspended tray, and to blow off the hulls as they were detached by
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