This is kind of a stretch to include in the "accouterments" category, but probably not more than some other things we get here from time to time, so I hope the moderators won't object.
A couple months ago I made a rope, Indian fashion, thus:
It is made from 170 pound hemp twine, braided in an eight-strand box braid, and is about 1/2" square when not under tension. I cut the cords at about 30', which came out to around 24' finished length. Hopefully the braid pattern is clear enough in the closeup:
Initially I was intending on making it into a ceremonial prisoner tie, with wrapped quillwork and tinkler cones on the end, something like the one described and (poorly) illustrated here:
https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/blog/fort-pitt-museum/bound-by-tradition-prisoner-restraints-in-the-captive-experience.
I decided to leave it plain, though, at least for now, as it occurred to me that I am unlikely to really need a ceremonial rope for tying up my enemies anytime soon and in the meantime the decorations would preclude me using the rope for any practical purpose. I am also fairly confident that the Eastern Woodlands people occasionally made plain ropes for more mundane purposes, like tying up horses. As a matter of fact, the Native words for prisoner halters/collars were also used to designate horse tack once they were introduced to the beasties, so it is clear there was a conceptual link between the two functions. For now I've just whipped the ends with a bit of lighter weight twine to keep them from unraveling - there is a rope from the Museum of Natural History, anthropology division, that appears to use the same braid techniques but is evidently braided back unto itself like a backsplice to finish off the ends. I like the look, but have no idea how to do it without risking unraveling the whole thing in the process. I'll need to make up a short piece of rope that I can rebraid as necessary to experiment with, I guess.
I have a bunch of cord left over from this and an earlier tumpline project, and was thinking about making a couple more ropes and putting them up for sale if there is sufficient interest in this kind of thing.
