352 EEPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



and Simms, of the Field Columbian Museum, several of these nest-like 

 baskets were clustered on the same platform and a rude fence served 

 for inclosure.'^ 



IN HOUSE BUILDING AND FURNITUEE 



House and furniture were here and there constructed of basket 

 work, so the basket maker became architect and cabinetmaker. Of the 

 former, the wall may have been constructed like a huge, coarse basket, 

 with upright stakes for warp and brush, canes, rushes, or leaves of 

 palm for weft. The roof, also, especially in its framework, was in some 

 tribes an immense shallow basket bottom inverted. The rafters were 

 the parallel or radiating warp and the interlacing vines the openwork 

 woof into which many kinds of thatch were fitted. 



Accessor}^ to the house, whether a woven structure or not, were 

 fences, awnings, screens, and shelters. They were woven after the 

 fashion of the walls. In middle America and the tropical portions of 

 South America, but far more skillfully in the Philippine Islands and 

 all about the Indo-Pacific, the mat and light basketry serve for seclu- 

 sion and decoration among the houses. Open checkerwork, twilled 

 weaving, wattling, or twined textile are as effective as they are light 

 and easily put together. When they were moving about, or in situa- 

 tions where a compact dwelling would have been burdensome, it was 

 an atiair of only a few moments to imitate the nest-building birds and 

 throw together a wickiup or leaf shelter of some kind. 



The winter houses of the Pomo Indians were a rude kind of feath- 

 ered basketry. They are described by Carl Purdy * as domes of wicker- 

 work, thatched heavily with grass or tules (p. 443, with illustration). 

 The summer houses were of wickerwork covered with boughs, and 

 the tribe moved several times a year as acorns, fish, game, or dry 

 quarters were desirable. They solved the problems of transportation 

 b}' moving themselves about. 



Furniture had not the pretentious meaning that it possesses in civ- 

 ilization. The bed for the Indians was the most desirable luxury. 

 Their chairs were mats of many styles of weaving and many colors. 

 All of them were plicated ])y hand and were the production of the 

 basket maker. 



But the bed was not always a basket. In the North it was the 

 warmest fur and rol)es; in man}' tribes the mat took the place of the 

 robe, and over a wide area the hammock was chair Iw da}^ and l)ed at 

 night. In some of these the twine is knotted or netted and the ham- 

 mock is in no sense a basket. Throughout the Southwest a resting 

 device is formed by the very ancient basket-makers' process of string- 

 ing a number of stifi' rods together b}^ three or more rows of weaving. 

 (For a Hopi bridal costume case see Plate 103.) 



« For illustration see Newton H. Chittenden. Land of Sunshine, 1901, p. 202. 

 ''Land of Sunshine, XV, May, 1901. 



