ABORIGINAL AMERICAN BASKP:TRY. 855 



the Iniskct made oiicli other's acquaintauce centuries ago. (See Phites 

 !(»(>, 107.) 



In the shards examined by P^g-gers and Hohnes one fact is preserved 

 that no historian recounts, namely, that twined l)asketr3^ as varied and 

 l)eautiful as that of the Aleutian Islanders was made by the tribes in 

 the Mississippi Valley before the fifteenth century. 



AS A RECEPTACLE 



Very few of the Indian tribes of America were so unsettled in life 

 as to be without a home. About such a place accumulated personal 

 property and provisions for the future, large and small. On the Great 

 Plains of the West, receptacles were made of rawhidi^ gaudily painted. 

 On the MacKenzie drainage, bark of the white birch was the material, 

 decorated with (luills of the porcupine dyed in many colors. But for 

 holding the bone awl and the sinew thread, the trinkets belonging to 

 dress, the outfits of tisherman and hunter, the l>asket and the wallet were 

 well-nigh universal. In the industries and other activities of life in 

 which materials, utensils, apparatus, in a word, things were involved, 

 there were receptacles for holding them. The basket maker herself 

 has a kit of appliances for making her wares. 



One of the primary functions of ])asketrv, if not the very first, was 

 to contain or restrain something. The weir, fence, wing of the game 

 drive, wall of the house, besides many smaller objects of the coarsest 

 weave were invented long ))efore basketry became cooking utensils or 

 works of ceremony. The myriads of Indian baskets sold at railroad 

 stations and summer resorts have gone ))ack to first principles and are 

 made for the sole purpose of holding. 



In the north the small tools of the fur worker and trinkets are 

 easily lost in the snow. The workl)asket or something in its stead is 

 universal. About Point Barrow the Tinne (Athapascan) Indians make 

 coiled baskets in se\eral styles of weaving. These are traded to the 

 Eskimo. On the Bering seacoast of Alaska rougher trinket cases 

 appear. The Attn makers of dainty wallets in grass, living away out 

 on the Aleutian chain, are quite as skillful in the manufacture of cigar 

 cases, which, ])y the way, are nothing more than two of their old-fash- 

 ioned cjdinders fitted one into the other and fiattened. Receptacles of 

 basket wood, with no other function than just to hold things, are to be 

 found in all the areas of the Western Hemisphere, in all sizes from 

 the granary down to the sheath for an awl, in every one of the tech- 

 nical processes and in every degree of fineness. It is the one function 

 of universal application. 



Plate 108 is an ammunition holder in twined Ixisketry from the 

 Tlinkit Indians of Sitka, Alaska. It is ornamented b}^ false embroid- 

 ery. The interesting fact concerning this specimen is that as soon as 

 these Indians came in contact with the Russians they began to imitate 



