430 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



From the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1858 

 (p. 225), Puget Sound Agency, T. Simmon, agent, is quoted: 



There is a portion of the Indians of my district whose homes are high up on the 

 river, principally on the Nisqually, Puyallup, and Snoqualmie. They are nearly 

 related to the Yakimas and Ivlikitats l)y blood, and are sometimes called Klikitats. 



R. S. Landsdale, agent, Wliite Salmon Agency (p. 275), writes: 



Many of the Klikitats were removed during the late war from their former homes, 

 west of the Cascade Mountains, to this agency. 



The home of the Klikitat Indians, says Mrs. Molson," was along the 

 waters of the Columbia and its tributaries, from the Cascade Mountains 

 on the west to the Bitter Root Range on the east, and from 46 degrees 

 44 miiuites north, to what is now eastern Washington and northern 

 Idaho. They were not only rovers and marauders, but they went on 

 annual expeditions to trade, carrying dried buffalo meat and robes, 

 but also wild hemp, dried and twisted, to exchange for dried salmon 

 and dentalia. They held the gateway between the East and the West, 

 for the river was the only route of comuuinication. South of the 

 Columbia, along the ocean, is an old path known as the "Klikitat 

 trail." They journeyed south by this route and returned north by 

 the Klamath trail on the eastern side of the Cascades. There are no 

 indications of their being basket makers. Their kindred, still in the 

 old home, make no imbricated ware. 



Plate KU is a tj^pical coiled and imbricated berry basket of the Kli- 

 kitat Indians, from the collection of Mrs. R. S. Shackelford, from whom 

 the following information is received: The inside walls, both founda- 

 tion and sewing, are from splints of the root of the giant cedar 

 {Thuja plicata)^ collected on the sides of Mount Hood. The orna- 

 mentation is the imliricated work described in detail on page 427, the 

 materials being of the white Tooksi or squaw grass. Cedar and cherry 

 })ark are also used, and for color the yellow dj'e is procured from 

 the Oregon grape {Berheris nervosa)^ the brown dye from alder bark, 

 and the black from acorns soaked in mud. The meaning of the 

 artistic terraced design is not known. Six months were consumed in 

 making it. Catalogue No. 207756, U. S. National Museum. The 

 following story was gathered from a basket maker b}- Mrs. Shackelford: 



The Spirit told the first weaver to make a basket (tooksi). So she repaired to the 

 forest and pondered over her mission. Gathering the plant yi, squaw grass, elk 

 grass, pine grass, and the red cedar roots, noo wi ash {Thuja jiUcaia), she began to 

 weave, and after many toilsome days a basket was produced. She carried it to the 

 lake and dipped it full of water, but it leaked, and the Spirit said to her: " It will 

 not do. Weave again a tight basket with a pattern on it." She sat by the water- 

 side, and as she looked into the clear depths of the lake the pattern (chato timus) 

 was revealed to her in the refracted lines, and with new courage she repaired to the 

 depths of the forest and worked until she wrought a basket on which the ripples of 



« Basketry of the Pacific Coast, Portland, Oregon, 1896. 



