Some Old World types of cotton had been grown in India and the Near East for centuries, but only very small quantities of it ever reached Europe. This cotton was not only expensive, but weak and difficult to weave because of its short strands.
In Europe the short strands of the Old World cotton served primarily for padding jerkins under the coats of mail worn in battle. In time the uses of cotton expanded to the making of fustian, which was a coarse material built on a warp of stronger flax and a woof of Old World cotton.
Not until American cotton arrived in England, however, did the phrase "cotton cloth" appear in English; the Oxford English Dictionary's earliest date for it is 1552.
The long-strand cotton of the American Indians so surpassed in quality the puny cotton of the Old World that the Spaniards mistook American Indian cloth for silk and interpreted its abundance as yet further proof that these new lands lay close to China.
For thousands of years before the European conquest of America the Indians had been using this carefully developed cotton to weave some of the finest textiles in the world. Many remnants of these early cloths survive to the present day, their colors and designs intact, after several thousand years in the desert burials of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.
Cotton is still the most important and widely used vegetable fiber in the world, and the overwhelming majority of the cottons grown are of American origin.
Cotton As We Know It
