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 sagamise, 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.[20] 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,[21] one end of the mat being rolled up for a pillow as shown in figure 3. [Illustration: 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. Mats were woven in two or more styles. Where the strands or parts were uniform in size and rigidity they were simply interlaced, but when one strong or rigid series was to be kept in place by a pliable series, the latter were twisted about the former at the intersections as in ordinary twined weaving. The heavy series of strands or parts were held together side by side by the intertwined strands placed far apart, a common practice yet among native mat-makers. Much variety of character and appearance was given to the fabric by varying the order of the strands in intersection. It was a common practice to interweave strands of different size, shape, or color, thus producing borders and patterns of no little beauty. Du Pratz thus mentions the use of dyes by the Louisiana Indians: "The women sometimes add to this furniture of the bed mats woven of cane, dyed of 3 colours, which colours in the weaving are formed into various figures."[22] This is well illustrated in the mat from a rock shelter in Tennessee, later to be described, and the Indians of the east and north practiced the same art. Speaking of the ceremony of smoking the calumet among the Iroquois, De la Potherie says: