42 



THK ORICGON NAPURALIvST. 



A MONSTER INDIAN BASKET. 



Indian Ijaskets two and a half feet 

 in diametei and about the same size 

 from top to bottom are sights which 

 delight tlie eyes of those interested in 

 baskets. Tliough they are now very 

 difficult to obtain the leading collec- 

 tions on the coast and in the east all 

 contain one or more such. But bas- 

 kets beyond these dimensions would 

 be very hard to obtain, for the reason 

 that the weaver would most likely get 

 tired of the work and give it up long 

 before the basket was finished. There 

 are baskets in certain nuuseums three 

 feet in diameter, but they are very 

 few, and for that reason and because 

 of the difficulty of duplicating them 

 they are very highly valued. 



There is, however, one Basket (and 

 it deserves to be printed with a capi- 

 tal) of nearly twice the.se dimensions. 

 It is hanging now in the Market street 

 office of the San Francesco & Noith 

 Pacific Railway Company, and is an 

 object of much interest to crowds of 

 men and women who have no special 

 interest in the ordinary Indian basket. 

 This basket is known as the "Tee" 

 weave, which is the most intricate of 

 all the weaving done by the Indians. 

 We quote the following words of de- 

 scription and history: 



Fine teeds run through the basket 



as plainly marked as if it were 

 painted. In shape the basket is some- 

 what like a globe, with the exception 

 that the upper half extends outward 

 (upward) a little. That portion of the 

 work, however, is not exceptional. It 

 is the enormous size of the basket that 

 makes it exceptional. 



The basket was made by a Poma 

 Indian woman in the village near 

 Ukiah, and the work consumed nearly 

 two years. It was commenced in No- 

 vember, 1895, and finished only a few 

 days ago. Poor woman! When she 

 started to make the basket she in- 

 tended to eclipse all the previous ef- 

 forts of her tribe (the most skillful and 

 the mcst celebrated basket makers in 

 the world) but she never considered 

 just how big the basket was really to 

 be. Possibly she did not think it 

 worth considering. But when she 

 came to remove it her difficulties com- 

 menced, for it was found that tho bas- 

 ket was too large to be taken out by 

 any of its exits. At last the problem 

 was solved by the purchaser paying 

 enough for the basket to juake it pio- 

 fitable for the woman to tear her house 

 away. This done the basket was 

 .soon on its way to San Francisco. 

 The woman realized enough on it to 

 enable her to live in affluence the rest 

 of her days, and she is now looked up 

 to as the millionaire of her tribe. Her 

 from top to Ijottom, and around them basket is the largest ever made of its 



are woven the .strands of fiber of which 

 the basket is composed. In among 

 these are woven the different colored 

 fibers which go to make up the pat- 

 tern. Each of the fiber threads is put 

 in its place as tight as the cotton in a 

 piece of sheeting, and the pattern is 



kind, and the chancei are it 

 laigest that ever will be. — W, 



is the 

 C. C. 



During 1897 theie were received in 

 New York City alone the plumage of 

 3,000,000 biids for the adornment (?) 

 of women's hats. 



