2716-C Twisted fibers covered with feathers Arundinaria tecta 2716-H Twisted fibers covered with feathers Asimina triloba 2717-C Twisted fibers covered with feathers Asimina triloba 2717-G Woody material with feathers attached Asimina triloba 2717-I&E Twisted fiber mass Asimina triloba 2718-E Twisted fiber mass Asimina triloba 2718-K Bristle-like vegetable fiber Nolina georgiana 2719-J Twisted vegetable fiber Asimina triloba 2721-A Mat Arundinaria tecta 2721-S Fragment of basketry Arundinaria tecta 2722-D Twisted fiber Arundinaria tecta 2722-I Twisted fiber covered with feathers Arundinaria tecta 2724-A Twisted fiber covered with feathers Arundinaria tecta 2724-K Fawn colored string Arundinaria tecta 2731 Mat Arundinaria tecta 2782 Copper stained rope Asimina triloba 2781 Charred basket Arundinaria tecta 2783 Fibers adhering to copper sheet Arundinaria tecta A comparison of materials in prehistoric collections reveals an excess of animal materials in the artifacts from Spiro Mound. One gets the impression that in Spiro textiles strings of vegetable fiber are usually surfaced with hair or other animal materials to increase the softness of the product. This may account for the almost exclusive use of canebrake and pawpaw, both relatively coarse fibers used without preliminary treatment. A striking contrast is between the slipshod way of making string and the highly precise fine techniques of covering it with hair and feathers. SUMMARY This survey makes no pretension of being complete, but it is an adequate sampling of the fibers utilized by the Eastern Indians and illustrates their resourcefulness in exploiting the raw materials at hand. It is noticeable that they used a great variety of plants and that one of the determining properties or qualifications was the local abundance of a plant. There seems to have been a tendency to use the monocotyledonous plants and the bast from the trees for coarser work and the diocotyledonous herbaceous plants for the manufacture of finer cords and threads. Several general points of interest are apparent from the comparative study of these prehistoric and historic plant materials. 1. The plant fibers used by the prehistoric people were rarely if ever treated before utilization, while among the modern Indians a high degree of skill has been attained in the preparation of the fibers before spinning.