Transcription

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were spinning opossum fur into yarn or rope, making opossum skin rugs, wearing dilly bags with coarse grass, making string from the bark and then from the string, manufacturing loose mesh bags and nets for fishing. Describing these; the fur was plucked from the animals in the Spring when the Winter coats were loosening, and a small spindle was made in the form of a double cross, that is to say, a green haft about 20 inches long with a nine inch cross stick about 4 or 5 inches through the top and another at right angles to the first one. These sticks were fixed by raising the bark of the haft and pushing them under it. The operator (a man) sat on the ground with a pile of fur at his left hand and gave the rotary motion to the spindle by rolling it smartly with the palm of his right hand about his brawny thigh. The tips of the cross sticks picked up the fur, fed to them by the operator's left hand, the whole operation went on with amazing swiftness and dexterity and in some miraculous way, which at this distance of time I can not exactly explain, the fur became a long and rather uneven looking rope of about three eighths of an inch diameter. It was chiefly used cut into lengths for aprons and for waist girdles. Not being very strong it was necessary to pass at least half a dozen turns round the waist to carry a tomahawk or boomerangs.

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