372 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



Yokaia, Kulanapan family, Ukiali Valley, California. 

 Yokiitp, Mariposan family, mid-California. 

 Yuki or Ukie, Yukian family, Ronnd Valley, California. 

 Yurok, Weitspekan family, Klamath River, California. 

 Zufii, Zunian family, western New ^lexico. 



EASTERN NORTH AMERICA 



For thus the tale was told 



By a Penobscot woman 



As she sat weaving a basket, 



A basket or abaziioda 



Of that sweet-scented grass 



Which Indians dearly love. 



— Charles Godfrey Lelanp. 



Eiisterii North America will include the tribes east of the Rock}^ 

 Mountains. Many of them are now basket makers, l)ut archeology is 

 doing excellent service in helping- to complete a map of this area in 

 order to determin(> the distril)ution of the various technical })rocesses 

 that obtained in al)original times. The few^ types of the art that now 

 survive must not l)e taken as covering the ground of ancient weaves. 

 The recovery of the latter by the Bureau of American Ethnology, the 

 Peabody Museum, and othei' explorations is one of the most wonder- 

 ful contri))utions of the spade to the ethnologist. Though basketry 

 wan anciently made of grass, hemp fil)er, ])ark, young stalks, and sap- 

 wood, and for that reason is the luost perishable of human manufac- 

 tures, under favorable conditions salt mines, nitrous caves, the desert's 

 aridity, metallic earths, and even tire have kindly preserved enough 

 of the delicate textures to reveal the processes of weaving in vogue 

 many centuries ago. 



Indian women in the Mississippi Valley used to decorate the out- 

 sides of (day vessels ])y pressing string and basketry products on the 

 soft material before Inirning. Thus they preserved the record of 

 the art for all time. By applying modeler's clay to these ancient 

 fragments the texture is at once revealed. In Popular Science 

 Monthly'^' will be seen account of experiments with these sybilline 

 shards, by George E. Sellers. William II. Holmes simultaneously 

 made larger investigations and published accounts of experiments by 

 him on Mound Builders and other ancient pottery of this area.* He 

 carefully washed the fragments of their ware and made casts of the 

 outer surface. The result was astonishing. Natural forces had eaten 

 away and greatly obscured the marks of textiles on the outside surface 

 of the shards, but in the ])ottom of the cavities, tilled for centuries 

 with earth, the impressions have been carefully preserved, and "the 

 mann(>r in which the fabric in all its details of plaiting, netting, and 

 weaving were constructed can be brought out quite as graphicall}' as 



«Vol. XI, 1877, p. 573. 



'^ Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1884, pp. 393-425. 



