ABORIGINAL AMERICAN BASKETRY. 



'215 



iiistructioii it is of the utmost iniportanco that the suhstaucos he cor- 

 rectly known, tiiat the manipulations of material he familiar, and, 

 ahoN'e all, that the coursi» of each element in the war}) and weft, the 

 foundation, and sewing- he imderstood. Care has hccn taken to draw 

 correctly the tigures us(^d in illustration. They are all in the huskctry 

 of the Indians, and, more than that, they ar(^ the bey-inniniis of more 

 retinetl processes and structures. 



HARVESTING MATERIALS 



Since the materials used in l)asketry are derived from different })arts 

 of a great variety of plants, the gatherine- of them involves many 

 industries. The harvesting of hasket material is no exception to the 

 rule that ever}- human activity begins with a natural process slighth^ 

 modified. The hirds are in a sense the original basket makers, and it 

 is known that some very expert Indian tribes take the grasses and the 

 stems of plants as they find them. They know nothing of drying or 



Fig. 1. 



mtid shoes, california. 



Klamath Indians. 



Cat. No. ■mm, U.S.N.M. Colleoted bv L. S. Dyar. 



manipulating. Improvement grows out of study into the nature of 

 suhstanees, until with some tribes the obtaining of raw materials 

 involves quite as much sagacity, toil, and travel as the making of the 

 basket. 



For procuring the roots, the apparatus of digging is necessaiy. 

 To be sure, the hand was the first hoe and the strong arm draws the 

 root from its hiding place, but our Indians had gotten bej^ond that. 

 The northern Indians, especially those of the Columbia River in west- 

 ern Canada, use quite elaborate forms of this device. It is wonderful 

 to think of the sagacity developed in savage minds by the quest for 

 underground substances and the proper discrimination of the places 



