IN CALIFORNIA 151 



not writing a technical treatise on basket making. 

 Then, when all is ready, old Dolores at her wickiup 

 and old Marta at hers, gather their material about 

 them, and sitting on the ground in the shade of their 

 airy ramadas, if the day be hot, or in the warm sun- 

 shine if it be cold, proceed to build up a basket 

 apiece. Each little wisp of grass that forms the 

 basis of a coil is wrapped closely with its strip of 

 juncus or rhus, as many as twelve wrappings to an 

 inch, and from fifty to seventy-five coils to the bas- 

 ket. Each coil is fastened tight to the one beneath 

 by pushing a wrapping-end through with an awl; 

 and as the work progresses the weaver's mind is 

 busy with the design which she will work in with the 

 dyed material on the ground beside her. "Shall I 

 make a diamond-square here?" she thinks, "or will 

 it look better without! Shall I do this or shall I 

 do that?" In this way, as momentary fancy dic- 

 tates, rather than from any preconceived idea of 

 weaving a story, does the California desert Indian 

 of to-day seem to work ; though the designs are often 

 conventional symbols of natural phenomena, re- 

 ceived by daughter from mother and grandmother, 

 out of a remote past. The basket making goes on 

 in intervals of other labor the cooking, the care of 

 the children and so on and is laid down and taken 

 up perhaps a hundred times until finished. 



