314 KEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



The Salish tribes of Washington and Oregon, and those of Califor- 

 nia, Arizona, and New Mexico, all place some kind of designs on their 

 basketr3\ Whether it has a symbolical significance or not has to be 

 determined in each case l)y inquiry. Looking at the whole field as 

 revealed in collections and publications, the following classes of objects 

 and phenomena sought to ])e represented seem to be complete: 



1. Natural phenomena, such as lightning, sunrise, clouds, and sky. 



2. Natural features of objects, such as niountains, lakes, shores, and rivers. 



'A. Plant phenomena, including splints of the plant used to make the design. 



4. Animals and parts of animals. There is no end to this species of design, from 

 the attempt to represent the entire animal alive and in motion, to the few stitches 

 which stand for a part of the creature, perhaps a wing, a fin, an eye, or a tooth, to 

 show what the animal might be. 



5. Human beings, either full or in part. 



0. Devices used by the Indians in their occupations, arrowheads especially. 



7. Ideas connected with the Indian thought and life; for example, such as the 

 opening in a Navaho basket. 



8. Mythical personages connected with sorcery and witchcraft. 



9. Their gods and heavenly beings. 



In thinking of symbolism the sign or form on the basket and the 

 thing signified must be kept separate in the mind. The sign ma}^ be 

 at the beginning pictorial and pass down through changes and abbre- 

 yiations to a mere outline that has no suggestion in it, or a simple 

 geometric figure common in the techuic may become a mythic being, 

 by making here and there a significant addition through suggestion. 



When it is remembered that the Indian represents in a general way 

 the childhood of the race, one has but to revert to that period of life 

 to recall how a spot of ink or a meaningless form was transformed 

 into a picture of something real or ideal. A fundamental geometric 

 figure on basketry may in similar fashion by the add'tion of a line or 

 two become almost any design, the visible home of any symbol. 



In this paper, devoted more particularly to the technical side of 

 b,' sketry, the manner of realizing the symbol is still important. How- 

 ever, it is not so much sought to teach that a certain design I'epresents 

 a butterfly as to see how the woman put the form into the texture of 

 her basket. 



The sculptor, the painter, the carver, and the potter are more realistic 

 than the basket maker, since the making of portraiture and pictures are 

 easily within their reach. Yet nothing is more common among them all 

 than abbreviation and synecdoche. Not only are the}^ under the spell 

 of sym])olism, l)ut the symbol is curtailed to the lowest terms. A fin 

 stands for a whale, incisor teeth for a beaver, the beak for a bird, and 

 often the imager is completely obliterated in the symbol. Now the 

 basket maker i.s still more handicapped by her technical limitations 

 and driven to syml)olism if she did not largely invent it. For pic- 

 torial effects on the surface, the maker is hampered b}^ the limitations 



