280 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



to a skillful use of Nature's colors. Under the descriptions of materials 

 attention was called to the vai"iety of natural pigmentation in tlie 

 stems and roots of the plants used in the construction of the Mission 

 work. The center of the specimen is in rectangles the colors of which 

 alternate between white and dark hrown. The center zone is made up 

 in straw color, white, and black; the third or outer zone in natural 

 shades of the stem — white, brown, and black — with here and there spots 

 of brown introduced into the straw-colored sewing. The outer edge 

 is in brown and white. Anciently the Mission baskets were not nearly 

 so gaudy looking, but among the frequent transformations in artistic 

 forms and colors this example illustrates progress in the adoption of 

 really beautiful motives of a high order. 



The elaboration of decoration in form first, and then of color, will 

 now be taken up more minutely. The aesthetic side of this part of 

 the sul)ject is so well explained by Holmes,'^' that it is here only neces- 

 sary to make plain the technical elements and processes involved in 

 ornamentation. 



As on Pueblo pottery, so on })asketry, some patterns are merely 

 likenesses of things, and that is all. A step in advance of this is the 

 portraiture of some particular and sacred natural feature, mountain, 

 body of water, trait, etc. Pictography is one grade higher, and, 

 beginning with attempts at figuring animals and plants entire, runs 

 the whole gamut of transformation, ending with conventional meto- 

 nymies, synecdoches, and geometric patterns of the classic type. 



FORM AND STRUCTURE 



Form in basketry is decided at the outset, not by the desire to create 

 somethin'g artistic, but to produce a useful receptacle. There is 

 scarce!}^ a basket so rude, however, that a sense of symmetr}" and other 

 artistic qualities did not enter into its composition, both as to its gen- 

 eral outline and the management of its details. These varied forms 

 are decided in reality by: 



(a) Function, which is discussed in the chapter on uses, from the 

 purely industrial point of view. 



(h) Materials, shown in the chapter on manufacture as to their 

 variety and quality, but here considered as suggesting and restricting 

 form. 



((') Imitation of natuial o])jects and of forms of utensils in other 

 materials. 



{(l) Physiological limitations. Both in the making of the basket 

 and in using it the Indian woman had ever in view the convenience of 

 her own body. The curves of the basket itself, the length and width, 

 the proportion of all its parts, as well as convenience of holding, 



«Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1889, i)p. 189-252. 



