THE ORliUC N NA 1 URALIST, 



's;z\ 



o 



MEXICAN HIEROGLYPHS. 



THE BASKET OF THE KLICKITAT. 



MRS. VELINA P. MOLSO.N. 



TlienichKologist is frequently caused to halt 

 in the reconstruction of ancient society by the 

 ignorance of the arts of savages around him. 

 This is especially true of an art which had its 

 culmination in savagery or barbarism, and 

 which liegan to decline at the touch of civiliz- 

 ation. Tills may be said of the Klickitat 

 baskets. These rare and beautiful baskets are 

 made by the different tribes belonging to the 

 Shahaptian linguistic slock, "a name based on 

 Scouler's report to the Royal Geographical 

 Society in 1841, and confirmed by later 

 scientific men, Gallatin, Hale, Schoolcraft and 

 and Latham. The derivation is Salishan, but 

 the meaning is unknown." 



The habitat 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° north to 44° south, 

 or what is now Eastern Washington and 



Northern Idaho. 



The Klickitats have b;en styled the 

 "Iroquois of the Northwest." They were 

 marauders and robbers. The very word 

 Klickitat means "robber." 



One of their favorite haunts in time gone by 

 was the Cascades of the Columbia, and an- 

 other the dalles or long nariows of the Colum- 

 bia. They were a constant menace to the 

 trappers and voyageurs from the foundation of 

 the Pacific Fur Company in 181 1, and con- 

 tinued to worry and harass the pioneers until 

 they were subdued by the Yakima war of 1856. 



The Klickitats are fine-looking and in- 

 telligent Indians; they are tall and clean limbed, 

 and as they followed the chase from all time 

 and lived in a higher altitude, they were the 

 superiors in every way of the miserable-looking 

 tribes of the Willamette valley and coast 

 Indians, as the latter tribes traveled about 

 squatting in canoes, subsisting on fish, and had 

 not the benefit of the bracing air of the plateau 



* Reprinted from "Basketry ot the Coast and Island.s 

 of the Pacific, etc." This pamphlet can be had of the 

 J. K. Gill Co.. Portland, Or. Price 25 cts. 



