PLANT MATERIALS USED IN MANUFACTURES 45 



are often provided with a bail and so hung up in the house or ramada, 

 and used to contain fruits or vegetables. One will hold about two 

 quarts. They are called chi-pd-cha-kish. 



All these baskets have flat bottoms, and will sit upright on the 

 ground. The large baskets running to a point at the bottom, made 

 by the northern California Indians and some Shoshone tribes, are 

 never made by the Coahuillas. The style of weaving that fashions 

 these long cone-shaped baskets is very different from the Coahuilla 

 methods. All these baskets are exceedingly strong and durable. 

 They will last for many years, and frayed portions can be easily 

 replaced. 



CHAPTER V. 



PLANT MATERIALS USED IN MANUFACTURES. 



27. After so many years of contact with white men, and so general 

 an appropriation of modern implements and utensils on the part of 

 many, it is surprising how much Indian ethnographic material remains 

 in use. This would naturally be the case with objects of a ceremonial 

 and religious character, but it is true also that in many Indian homes, 

 especially those of the old people, there is almost nothing, if we except 

 clothing, that is not of native manufacture. These articles are not 

 germane to this paper, of course, except as they illustrate the Indian 

 uses of plants. 



An exception should be made in the case of pottery which, although 

 it forms no part of the Coahuilla ethno-botany, has an important place 

 here, since it has probably superseded an earlier use of water-tight 

 baskets. The coast Indians do not seem to have made much pottery, 

 the very rare fragments or potsherds that are discovered being usually 

 attributed to the date when these Indians could have acquired the use 

 or knowledge of its manufacture from the Spaniards. Neither do the 

 Utes and Pah Utes manufacture vessels, and Mr. Coville states that 

 the Panamints do not. All the Indians of southern California of the 

 Coahuilla and Diegeno tribes today make earthen ware in abundance. 

 It has been often inferred that they were taught its manufacture at the 

 Spanish missions. Even Mr. Hugo Reid states that the Indians of 

 San Gabriel learned to make their pots from the friars. 1 Nevertheless 

 this is, I think, a mistake. While the Shoshone tribes are not usually 

 or perhaps naturally potters, all the Colorado tribes, except perhaps 



1 California Farmer, Vol. XIV, p. 154. 



