ABORIGINAL AMERICAN BASKETRY. 



258 



materiiil und some of the Ix'st ware is so made u}). It passes easily, as 

 one mig'ht guess, into the Lillooet style, in which the two elements of 

 the foundation are thin and Hat. Fig. -ti> is a watei- jar from tlie Wolpi 

 pueblo, one of the Hopi group, collected long ago by James Stev^on- 

 ,son. It is Cat. No. 42lL>l> r.S.N.M., and was tirst figured in the Second 

 Animal Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. (See tig. 41 F. ) 



Plate 28 represents two line old coiled baskets from the pueblo of 

 Sia, on the E,io Grande River, New Mexico. In addition to the struc- 

 ture, which consists of two rods and a splint al)ov(» sewed witli willow 

 splints, the stitches interlocking and catching in the welt Ixdow, the 

 ornamentation a stepped design, suggestive of pueblo ai'chitecture on 

 the upper ligure and spirals made up of colored rectangles on the lower 

 figure, needs to l)e merely pointed out. The characteristic sought to be 

 illustrated here in this connection is the false braid maUe on tiie sur- 

 face produced by sewing a single 

 splint in a ligure of eight wea\ing, 

 shown in the plate. The modem 

 Indians of this puel)lo do not make 

 basketry of this character, and it is 

 altogether reasonalde to think that 

 in the olden times these pieces came 

 into the possession of these people 

 by traffic from Shoshonean tribe.s 

 near b}'. Catalogue No. 134213, 

 U.S.N.M. Collected l)y James Ste- 

 venson. 



G. Thiue-i'od foundation . — This is 

 the t^^pe of foundation called l)y Carl 

 Purdy bam shi l)u, from bam, sticks, 

 and sibbu, three. Among the Pomo 



and other tribes in the western part of the United States the most 

 delicate pieces of basketry" are in this style. Dr. Hudson calls them 

 "the jewels of coiled basketry.'* The surfaces are beautifully cor- 

 rugated, and patterns of the most intricate character can l)e wrought 

 on them. The technic is as follows: Three or four small willow 

 stems of uniform thickness s(M■^'(^ for the foundation, as shown in 

 fig. 50; also in cross section in Hg. 41 G. The sewing, which may 

 be in splints of willow, l)lack or white carex root, or cercis stem, 

 passes around the three stems constituting the coil, under the upper 

 one of the bundle below, the stitches interlocking. In some examples 

 this upper rod is replaced l)y a thin strip of material serving for a 

 welt (see lig. 41 F). In the California area the materials for Ixisketry 

 are of the finest quality. The willow stems and carex root are suscep- 

 tible of division into delicate filaments. Sewing done with these is 

 most compact, and when the stitches are pressed closel}^ together the 



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