154 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
A great part of the weaving is done during the winter months and 
indoors. ‘The underground huts of the Aleuts are made of driftwood. 
wreckage, or timber deposited by ships, covered over with sod. ‘These 
grass-covered mounds, which are about: six feet high, have a little door 
at one end and a small glazed window at the other, and it is marvelous 
ALEUTIAN BASKET 
that such fine and beautiful baskets can be made in such places, and 
with such light, the specimen here illustrated having from twenty-five 
to thirty stitches to the inch. John Smith’s Indians used to suspend 
their baskets from the limb of a tree during the weaving, but these 
people hang theirs from a pole after the bottom has been completed 
or support them on sticks thrust into the ground, weaving the sides down- 
ward, that is with the basket upside down. 
The Aleuts make several weaves. This basket is of plain twine- 
weave with two exquisitely wrought rows of hemstitching on the bottom, 
while the sides are decorated with four borders of false embroidery. 
