BASKETS. 



327 



workmanship ot those baskets, and the statement that one of them 

 came from the &quot;great river, south, I am well convinced that they were 

 made by the Indians of the region between the Koyukuk and Silawlk 

 Rivers, and sold by them to the Kuwfifiniiun, whence they could easily 

 find their way to Point Barrow through the hands of the &quot;Nunatan- 

 miun&quot; traders. 



The Eskimo of Alaska south of Bering Strait make and use bas 

 kets of many patterns, but east of Point Barrow baskets are exceed 

 ingly rare. The only mention of anything of 

 the kind will be found in Lyon s Journal. 1 He 

 mentions seeing at Ighilik a &quot;small round bas 

 ket composed of grass in precisely the same 

 manner as those constructed by the Tibboo, in 

 the southern part of Fe/zan, and agreeing with 

 them also in its shape.&quot; Now, these Africans 

 make baskets of precisely the same &quot;coiled&quot; 

 work (as Prof. Mason calls it) as the Thine, so 

 that in all probability what Lyon saw was one 

 of these same baskets, carried east in trade, 

 like other western objects already referred to. 

 The name ama applied to these baskets at 

 Point Barrow (the other two names appear to 

 be simply &quot;bag&quot; or receptacle) corresponds to 

 the Greenlandic amiit, the long thin runners 

 from the root of a tree, &quot;at present used in the 

 plural also for a basket of European basketwork,&quot; (because they had no 

 idea that twigs could be so small) (Jr^nlaudske Ordbog. 



No. 89709 [i:U9] from Utkiavwiii, is a peculiar bag, the only one of 

 the kind seen, used for the same purpose, as the boxes and baskets just 

 described. It is the stomach of a polar bear, with the muscular and 

 glandular layers removed, dried and carefully worked down with a skin 

 scraper into something like goldbeater s skin. This makes a large, 

 nearly spherical bag^TJ inches in diameter, of a pale brownish color, 

 soft and wrinkled, with a mouth inches wide. A small hole has been 

 mended by drawing the skin together and winding it round tightly on 

 the inside with sinew. 



Fio. 337. Small basket. 



