If you are at the end of your rope, find more fibers.
While I am not sure if it is that easy, I do plan on trying as the concept of creating cordage from natural materials has me curious. The skill is historic, too, an ancient practice that predates the purchase of artificial threads, cords and ropes.
Before modern times (and easy access at Granite, Shirley’s or Edgartown Hardware), people had only natural supplies to create materials that tie, bind or connect items. Considered humanity’s most fundamental skill, cordage was needed for shelter and boat building, food acquisition through nets, fishing line and bow strings, and the creation of clothes or other coverings. Just this month, a 12,000-year-old piece of stitched leather found in an Oregon cave was announced by archaeologists to be the oldest known example of sewed clothing.
As necessity is the mother of invention, one needed to only look around to find the materials required. Animal parts, such as sinew, could be used, as could rawhide and catgut.
Rawhide is the untanned skin or hide of an animal which was sliced into ribbons that could be employed as is or braided into raitas or lassos. Catgut is not from cats, but refers to the fiber from the walls of animal intestines that has been used for sutures and instrument strings.
For those that prefer plants, there are even more options and examples of vegetative cordage. Over 1,000 species of plants in America have been used for fiber. Of course, Indigenous people should be acknowledged and credited with its early use here.
Wampanoags made baskets out of beach grass, cordage and nets, among other items. Aquinnah Wampanoag Julia Marden practices this tradition, making baskets, bags, mats, straps sages and a special mantle (a cape-like garment) with fibers from cattail, bulrush, cedar bark, basswood and sweetgrass. Her hand-twined turkey-feather mantle is an exquisite and beautiful example of historic hand-twined art.
Fiber materials abound and can be chosen based on whether they can be tugged, twisted or tied in a knot without breaking. You don’t have to pull some strings to get good cordage. Filaments can come from almost any part of a plant, including its roots (pine, spruce), leaves (cattails), bark (cedar), branches, vines, (grape or briar) stems (nettle or flax), limbs and even seed fluff (think milkweeds).
Ropewalks could be considered early community efforts to make longer ropes. By lining up materials in open air (sometimes as long as 1,000 feet), people would walk backwards twisting fibers to create longer ropes, though this effort eventually became mechanized.
A local leader in commercial ropemaking was found in Plymouth. The Plymouth Cordage Company was started by an abolitionist in 1824, and by the late 19th century became the largest manufacturer of rope and twine in the world. Their products were used in ship rigging, and the USS Constitution had ropes made by this company. Their braided legacy lasted for 140 years, and now the Plymouth Cordage Company Museum exists at the site to tell its historic story.
On a smaller scale, farmers appreciated their binder twine for tying up their hay and straw. The heroine in Upton Sinclair’s novel Boston worked in the factory which is described in that book.
Bound together by history, nature and creativity, traditional cordage creation may now be hanging by a thread. It is an art and science for those who still practice it, but for most of history it was a necessity.
Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.