ABORIGINAL AMERICAN BASKETRY. 877 



whites, jiiid mentions very old speeiniens now in the possession of tiuit 

 nnisenni.and others have been seen in private eollections. The founda- 

 tion coils are of sweet oruss and al)oiit one-quarter of an inch in diam- 

 eter. In some very old specimens the sewing- is done with looped 

 stitches, being- continuous from the edge toward the center of the basket 

 and not following the coils, as is usual. He also finds the following 

 references to old basket work of the New P^ngland Indians. (See Plate 

 124.) (lookin is (juoted, writing in 1(>7-J:, with the following words: 



Several sorts of baskets, great and siaall, some of them hold 4 bushels or more, 

 and so on downward to a pint. * * * Some of these baskets are made of rushes 

 and some of l)ents (coarse grass), others of maize husks, others of a kind of silk 

 grass, others of a kind of wild hemp, and some of bark of trees. JNIany of these are 

 very neat and artificial, with the portraitures of birds, lieasts, fishes, and tlowers upon 

 them in colors. 



The .soldiers under Captain Underbill, after destroying the Pequot 

 fort in Connecticut in 1637, brought back with them ''several delight- 

 ful baskets." Brereton (lf)(»il) found baskets of twigs ''not unlike our 

 osier." Champlain saw corn stored in " great grass sacks." Josselyn 



con, (IF HASKKT STRIPS. 



writes, "Baskets, bags, and mats, woven with bark of the lime tree 

 and rushes of several kinds, dyed as before, some l)lacTv, blue, red, 

 yellow." In 1()20 the Pilgrims found on a cache at Cape Cod "a 

 great new basket, round and narrow at the top and containing 8 or 4 

 busliels of shelled (^orn, with 30 goodly ears unshelled." The New 

 England Indians were probably not less expert basket makers than 

 other tribes to the west and south. Does not the fact that the three 

 distinct forms of weaving — twined, checker, and coiled — still found 

 among the Ojibwas seem to indicate a survival of these types from 

 prehistoric times all over the great Algonkin area? A few years back 

 this type of coiled work was more in vogue than at present. The 

 next specimen described will take the reader a long way from the 

 Great Lakes. (C. C. Willoughby.) 



Plate 125 shows the detail of a flat coiled basket of the Eskimo about 

 Cumberland Inlet, eastern Canada. The foundation likewise contains 

 a Inindle of straws, but badly put together and sewed with sinew 

 thread, the stitches being wide apart and caught beneath a few straws 

 of the preceding coil. The bottom is flat and the walls drawn in so as 



