They Eat Of The Same Food, And At
The Same Time As The Men, Laugh And Talk Before Them, And Receive
Equal Support And Respect In Old Age.
They sell mats and bark-
cloth in the piece, and made up, when they can, and their husbands
do not take their earnings from them.
All Aino women understand
the making of bark-cloth. The men bring in the bark in strips,
five feet long, having removed the outer coating. This inner bark
is easily separated into several thin layers, which are split into
very narrow strips by the older women, very neatly knotted, and
wound into balls weighing about a pound each. No preparation of
either the bark or the thread is required to fit it for weaving,
but I observe that some of the women steep it in a decoction of a
bark which produces a brown dye to deepen the buff tint.
The loom is so simple that I almost fear to represent it as
complicated by description. It consists of a stout hook fixed in
the floor, to which the threads of the far end of the web are
secured, a cord fastening the near end to the waist of the worker,
who supplies, by dexterous rigidity, the necessary tension; a frame
like a comb resting on the ankles, through which the threads pass,
a hollow roll for keeping the upper and under threads separate, a
spatula-shaped shuttle of engraved wood, and a roller on which the
cloth is rolled as it is made.
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