302 COILED BASKETRY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA LETH. ANN. 41 
have made baskets ever since their girlhood, a few each year. No. 
34 puts letters on her baskets, which she has learned from the whites, 
such as the initials of names, and to these she sometimes adds the 
date of the year in which the work was completed. 
Not many patterns have been the result of dreams, but those which 
are so regarded are claimed to have been clearly and accurately pre- 
sented in the dream. It is thought that they come from the super- 
natural powers. Usually a woman’s friends do not copy her dream 
design, even if she gives her permission to do so, but if it is a nice 
design, sooner or later some one sees it on a basket, perhaps a stranger, 
and copies it, and after that it is soon taken up generally. The 
dreamer makes no effort to prevent her ideas being copied, but some 
old dream designs are never duplicated because of their peculiarity 
and failure to appeal to the people. Hyven the woman who receives 
a vision of such a nature usually has the same opinion about it that 
her neighbors express, and seldom reproduces it. Old women some- 
times teach their dream designs to their daughters or grandchildren, 
who treat them as they would any other old design, and neighbors 
who know their origin and have hitherto refrained will then more 
readily copy them after the granddaughter or daughter has had the 
first opportunity. It was explained that this was because between 
the dreamer and her basket design an intimate supernatural relation 
existed which became weaker if members of the family formed 
connecting links. This was because the power, although belonging 
to the dreamer personally and not connected with her relatives, was - 
not as liable to do them such harm as might be brought upon an 
outsider. 
It was not known whether or not her husband’s or male relatives’ 
dreams were ever portrayed by a woman on her baskets, but it was 
stated that they were often painted on a girl’s clothing or on tipis. 
Guardian spirits are all personal or individual, each differing from 
the other even though designated by the same name. ‘There are no 
special guardians who are considered particularly potent where 
basketry designs are concerned. The designs themselves are all 
that are supposed to be seen in a dream and no two of those observed 
are alike. 
No. 25 offered a bit of information as to her personal experience 
in regard to dreams of this nature. She said that formerly they were 
very common, but the patterns so obtained were merely variations 
in form or arrangement of those already well known. She said that 
occasionally she had had very vivid impressions of designs in her 
dreams and that in every case she saw them on baskets in different 
stages of completion. Never but once were they associated with 
anything but baskets, and some, she thought, were very nice to look 
at; they either resembled those already known to her, or more rarely 
