38 



Mat and Basket Weaving. 



the examples of the handicraft of the latter are of old time and ancient form, while the 

 illustrations that I shall give are almost all of very modern make by the Samoans and 

 Micronesians, which closely resemble these. As I have reason to believe that the ex- 

 amples from the Caroline Ids., shown in Plate I, Nos. 8081, 4024, are at least close 

 copies of baskets made by the ancestors of the makers of the specimens before us, it 

 may be that the Samoans also copied more ancient examples ; but my knowledge of 

 the old basketry of the Samoans is too limited for me to form a just opinion on this. 

 I am inclined to consider the round form of the Samoan basket the older, as it certainly 

 is the cruder stage. This is a fair example of the deficiency of information on the bas- 



FIG. 48. SAMOAN SQUARE BASKETS. 



ketr}' of the Pacific islanders. With the exception of the Hawaiians no .serious at- 

 tempt has been made so far as I am informed, to trace the stages in the basketry of the 

 Oceanic groups ; indeed there are few specimens of old baskets from the Pacific in an}- 

 of the great colleAions. For that reason I feel justified in figuring the many non- 

 Hawaiian examples, even if I can add but little to our knowledge of them and their 

 place in basket chronology. The figures of Samoan baskets given by Turner'' do not 

 resemble any in this Miiseum, but the scale and want of detail may account for that. 

 According to this learned missionary baskets of pandanus were made by the Samoans 

 before they were taught by foreigners. 



All the round baskets shown in the figure are of coiled work, the pandanus (fala) 

 being knotted instead of twined. The sizes of the baskets in this Miiseum are : — 



2172. Ba.se elliptical, 11X6.7 in.; 5 in. high; handle flat, checker work; there are 

 four bands of dyed pandanus on the bod3'. 



'Rev. George Turner. 1,1,. D. Nineteen Years in Polj-nesia, London, i86i, p. 275. 



