[19] BULLETIN 39, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 

 II. COILED BASKETRY. 



Coiled basketry is produced by an over-and-over sewing with some 

 kind of flexible material, each stitch interlocking with the one imme- 

 diately underneath it. The exception to this is to 

 be seen on Eskimo and Digger baskets, in which 

 the passing stitch is driven through the wood of the 

 stitch underneath and splits it. The transition be- 

 tween lace work and coiled basketry is interesting. 

 In the netted bags of pita fiber, common throughout 

 middle America, in the muskemoots or Indian bags 

 of fine caribou skin thong from the Mackenzie 

 liiver district, as well as in the lace-like netting of 

 the Mohave carrying frames and Peruvian textiles, 

 the sewing and interlocking constitute the whole texr 

 ture (fig. 31, A), the woman doing her work over a 

 short cylinder or spreader of wood or bone, which 

 she moves along as she works. ^ When the plain 

 sewing changes to half-hitches — or stitches in which 

 the moving part of the filament or twine is wrapped 

 or served one or more times about itself — there is 

 the rude beginning of point lace work. This is 

 seen in Fuegian basketry as well as in many pieces 

 from various parts of the Old World (fig. 41). 



The sewing materials vary with the region. In 

 the Aleutian Islands it is of delicate straw; in the 

 adjacent region it is spruce root; in British Colum- 

 bia it is cedar or spruce root; in the more diversi- 

 fied styles of the Pacific States every available ma- 

 terial has been used — stripped leaf, grass stems, 

 rushes, split root, broad fillets, and twine, the effect 

 of each being well marked. In all coiled basketry, 

 properly so called, there is a foundation more or 

 less rigid, inclosed within stitches, the only imple- 

 ment used being originally a bone awl. 



Fig, 30 shows the metatarsal of an antelope, sharp- 

 ened in the middle and harder portion of the column, 

 the joint serving for a grip to the hand. Mr, F. H. 

 Cushing was of the opinion that the bone awl was 

 far better for fine basket work than any implement 

 of steel; the point, being a little rounded, would find 

 its way between the stitches of the coil underneath and not force 

 itself through them. The iron awl, being hard and sharp, breaks the 



^See Scientific American, July 28, 1900, and American Anthropologist (new ser. ), 

 April, 1900. 



15 



Fig. 30. 



bone awl for coiled 



basketry. 



Report U.S.N.M., 1884, pi. 64, 

 fig. 108. Collected by 

 Edward Palmer. 



