170 COILED BASKETRY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA _ [eru. ann. 41 
A second way of starting the elongated watch-spring type is by 
folding over the end of a bunch of coil splints and fastening the folded 
section to the adjoining part of the bundle by twining (fig. 5, a). 
From the finishing of these two sections the work proceeds as in the 
first kind, the ordinary sewing beginning at the second bend. In 
still another type which is round a short part of the coil is wrapped 
before the winding begins (fig. 5, 6, c). At first the coils so started 
are rather long for the proposed width of the finished bottom, but 
by thickening them on the long sides as the work progresses, a circu- 
lar form is soon obtained, so 
that what starts as an elon- 
gated watch spring is fin- 
ished perfectly round (fig. 6). 
This kind of bottom is not 
considered as neat or durable 
Fic. 5—Beginning of coils for elongated wateh-spring as a regular watch spring, 
pe and is more liable to leak. 
Some Lytton informants say that probably long ago all bottoms of 
baskets were of the watch-spring type, excepting perhaps those in 
some of the large and small .stlik. As the bottoms of these were 
very long and narrow, they were probably made of elongated or 
parallel coils, each woman having a preference for one kind or an- 
other. Some tried the various forms and later adopted one for general 
use, while others simply followed in their mothers’ or grandmothers’ 
footsteps and used the kind they had been taught to make, many 
never changing their habits to any extent. 
There are two kinds of parallel coiled bot- 
toms—those in which the parallel coiling consti- 
tutes only the central part, which is then sur- 
rounded by several rows of spiral coil (pl. 4, a) 
and those in which they form the whole bottom yy, ¢—Round bottom devel- 
with the exception of one ortwoencircling lengths —_ °Ped from elongated wateh- 
a 5 co é spring coiling 
(pl. 3, c). Aside from this, there is practically 
no difference between the two, hence they are treated here together. 
The parallel coiling is begun by doubling the bunch of splints 
in the middle and bringing the two ends together. A splint is wrapped 
a few times around the coil at the bend, and then woven back and 
forth over and under the two sections until they have been joined 
for the distance the worker desires, or approximately the proposed 
length of the bottom (fig. 7, a). A slight variation is obtamed by 
wrapping a piece of coil and bending this in the middle, uniting the 
two sides by twining. In either case the rest of the technique is as 
follows. One end of the double coil is bent back along one side, 
