ABORIGINAL AMERICAN BASKETRY. 349 



Eskimo, where there is no g-leaning- or milling; Aleutian, in which 

 the harvests come from the sea, and tlic daintiest of twined weaving- is 

 made in grass stems; and southeastern Alaska, which shall receive fur- 

 ther notice. Storage baskets are attributed to them by early voj-a- 

 gers. Nowadays the ware is small, no piece exceeding- half a bushel in 

 capacitv. Since seafaring- is mixed with hunting- and gleaning the 

 fields, the g-athering basket leads a bus.y life. Plates 136-149 represent 

 the types, which, larg-e and small, are chief!}' cylindrical in shape. The 

 methods of manufacture and decoration have been described. 



In Gerstaecker's Journal is the following- account of seed gatherers 

 in California: 



While I was standing there a couple of pretty, young girls came from the woods 

 with fiat baskets full of flower seed emitting a peculiar fragrance, which, they also 

 prepared for eating. They put some live coals among the seed, and, swinging it and 

 throwing it together to shake the coals and the seed well and bring them to contin- 

 ual and close contact without l)urning the latter, they roasted it completely, and the 

 mixture smelled so beautiful and refreshing that I tasted a good handful of it, and 

 found it most excellent (p. ^7b). 



Edwin Bryant, in his Rock}' Mountain Adventures, gives this 

 description of the acorn harvest: 



We soon learned from them that they were a party engaged in gathei-ing acorns, 

 which to these jioor Indians are what Avheat and maize are to us. They showed us 

 large (iuantities in their baskets under the trees. When dried and pulverized, the 

 flour of the acorn is made into bread or mush, and is their "staff of life." It is 

 their chief article of sul^sistence in this set'tion of California. Their luxuries, such 

 as bull beef and horse meat, they obtain by theft, or pa}' for in labor at exorbitant 

 rates. The acorn of California, from the evergreen oak {Qnercus Hex), is much 

 larger, more oily, and less bitter than on the Atlantic side of the continent. In 

 fruitful seasons the ground l)eneath the trees is covered with nuts, and the Indians 

 have the providence, when the produce of the oak is thus ])lentiful, to jirovide 

 against a short crop and the famine which must necessarily result to them from it l3y 

 laying up a supply greater than they Avill consume in one year (p. 240) . 



The Hupa Indians for collecting- seeds, according to Prof. P. PI 

 Goddard, use the l)asket in the shape of a common burden basket in 

 closely woven style. '^ They also made large storage baskets of close- 

 twined work called djelo, the base being of greater diameter than the 

 top." 



Plate 96 represents the harvesting outfit of the Hupa Indians on 

 Hupa Reservation in northwestern California. There is the open- 

 work-twined basket for picking- the seeds, the carrying basket in 

 openwork with a decorated band at the top for bearing the crop home, 

 the grauar}' basket, which bears significant!}^ on the outside the image 

 of destructive worms that eat the crop after it is harvested. The 

 woman's head has a pad of soft-twined worlv on the foreliead, across 

 which the buckskin band of the carrying baslvet rests. The outfit of 



«Life and Culture of the IIui:)as. Publications of the University of California. I, 

 1902, pi. XXII, fig. 2. 



