BASKET-WOBK. 247 



found by Mr. Schumacher during his early explorations on the island of 

 Santa Cruz. 



Dr. Yarrow's party were fortunate in saving a few fragments of baskets 

 found in the graves at Dos Pueblos and La Patera. They were very much 

 decayed, but two are shown on Plate XIV, Figs. 3 and 4. The basket, of 

 which Fig\ 4 represents a portion, was probably filled with the small black 

 seeds, or chia (Salvia Columbaria), which must have formed an important 

 article of food with the old Californians, judging from the abundance of 

 the seeds in the graves. These seeds were placed with the dead in various 

 receptacles, such as stone pots, shells, and baskets as in this instance. 



That basket-making is a very old art cannot be doubted, and while it 

 was probably practised to a greater or less extent by all, or nearly all, the 

 Indian tribes of America, it is of importance to note that these oldest known 

 baskets from the graves in California are not only made in the same man- 

 ner, and with the same materials, as those now employed by the present 

 tribes of the State, but that they are the same in method of construction, 

 and of closely-allied materials, with those from the graves and tombs of 

 Peru, as shown by many examples in the Peabody Museum. 



Mr. Schumacher has sent to the Peabody Museum an account of the 

 manufacture of baskets by the present Indians in Southern California, with 

 an instructive series of specimens representing the materials used, and also 

 the basket-work in its several stages. As this account is applicable to the 

 method employed by the former tribes of the coast, I copy the following 

 from his manuscript, and also introduce two illustrations taken from his 

 drawings : 



"The manufacture of baskets I also observed among the Techahet, a tribe of the 

 Cahuillos, at Agua Caliente, Los Angeles County, California, while making researches 

 for the Peabody Museum during the last year, and also on a previous occasion in North- 

 ern Cakfomia and Southern Oregon while in the employ of the United States Coast 

 Survey. Substantially the same method is employed in these several regions, though 

 the material slightly differs, and likewise existed in former times among the Coast 

 Indians of California, as is demonstrated by fragments found in their graves. 



"The Techahet use the reed-grass (Juncus robustus), which I found growing in the 

 small fresh-water marshes and creek-eddies at the beginning of the desert, and the tall 

 thin grass ( Vilfa riyens) found thriving with the Yucca, which flourishes in such great 

 varieties in that neighborhood ; both are used in the dried state. The former species 

 is used for binding the body of the basket, which is made of the latter. The reed- 



