Finger Weaving in Canada THE question whether the brightly coloured sash and garters of the Indians of Canada are of native origin and whether finger weaving, which they involve, is a pre-Columbian techniquo or an introduced feature which adapted itself to new surroundings, is considered by Marius Barbeau in “The Assumption Sash” (National Museum of Canada: Bull., 93, Anthrop. Series, 24; 1939). The Assomption and Achigan sashes are so called from their place of manufacturo as a home industry of the French Canadians for the fur traders of Montreal to barter with the Indians. They were also known as arrow sashes from their pattern, which includes a row of continuous arrow heads; and although there were others known by appropriate names, the arrow sash became the standard type, when the Hudson Bay Company nearly forty years age began to import a cheap manufactured sash from England, as it does still; this ruined the home industry, and attempts have been made recently to revive it. Research directed to the character of the older sashes preserved in museums in America and Europe, and study of the technique of finger weaving and its distributions has failed to produce evidence of its practice in Europe, which would account for its introduction into Canada in Colonial days. The Indians when they were belts—and this seems to have been exceptional before 1800—were strongly under the influence of the French; but there is no evidence of finger weaving in France, or elsewhere in Europe, except only in Norway and possibly Lapland, where finger woven garters are made. It is possible that it was a traditional handicraft in other European countries and has been forgotten. The alternative would seem to be that it was, as demonstrated by Wissler and Amsden, a type of weaving widely diffused in prehistoric and historic America, which was adopted from the Indians and further elaborated by early French colonists.