The displays in the Lake Chelan Historical Society Museum in Chelan, Washington include several examples of American Indian baskets. While the town of Chelan is named after the Chelan Indians, a Salish-speaking Plateau group, many of the basskets in this collection are from other areas and are often displayed in the style of the old cabinets of curiosities.
Basketry is, of course, a very ancient and traditional American Indian craft. American Indian baskets are often displayed in museums as a form of art. In his book Indian and Eskimo Artifacts of North America, Charles Miles writes:
“As an art, its also presents structural and surface beauties of great variety and merit. Some of the weaving is, in itself, so skillfully and lovingly done that it excites pleasure and admiration, and the surface treatment has a valid place in a worldwide consideration of man’s aesthetic efforts in design and color.”
In her entry on basketry in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Sherrie Smith-Ferri reports:
“Most baskets were decorated, often with elaborate geometric designs depicting various environmental features, such as quail topknots, lightning, or shark’s teeth. The finished basket, with its complexities of spacing, balance, symmetry, and placement of design elements onto a three-dimensional framework, had to be conceptualized at the start. Nothing was written; the weaver carried this intricate image in her mind even as she focused on the technical demands of basket construction.”
Writing in 1904 about American Indian basketmakers, Otis Mason, in his book American Indian Basketry, reports:
“Her patterns are in her soul, in her memory and imagination, in the mountains, watercourses, lakes, and forests, and in those tribal tales and myths which dominate the actions of every hour. She hears suggestions from another world.”
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, tourism opened up a market for Indian baskets, particularly as basket collecting became a middle-class hobby. In response to this market, American Indian basketmakers began to make new, non-traditional and non-function, styles. Baskets made for tourists were often small and featured elements such as handles, lids, and scallops.
Shown above is a traditional woven woman’s hat from the Klamath area. This style of hat was common in the Plateau area and in Northern California.
Shown above is a large cedar root basket.
Shown above is a Yakama basket.
Shown above is a 1940 Chelan basket.
Shown above is a Colville basket.
Shown above is a 1920 Shoshone basket.
The two baskets shown above were made for the tourist trade.
Shown above is a Fraser River (British Columbia) basket.
The non-traditional, non-functional style of this basket indicates that it was made as a tourist item.
Shown above is a small trade basket.
Shown above is a bark basket.
Northwest Coast Baskets
Shown above is a 1920 Quileute basket probably made for the tourist trade.
Shown above is a 1936 Quileute basket probably made for the tourist trade.
Shown above is a Makah basket.
Shown above is a 1920 Quileute basket.
Shown above is a Quileute basket.
Shown above is a small Quileute basket probably made for the tourist trade.
Southwestern Baskets
Shown above is a 1935 Navajo basket.
Shown above is a Tohono O’odham (Papago) water jug from Arizona.
Shown above is a Tohono O’odham (Papago) basket.
Shown above is a Tohono O’odham (Papago) basket.
Shown above is a Tohono O’odham (Papago) basket and an Apache basket.
Indians 101
Twice each week—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—this series presents American Indian topics. More about basketry from this series:
Indians 101: Some Northern Northwest Coast Baskets (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Feathered Pomo Baskets (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Columbia River Basketry (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Aleut Basketry (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Klikitat Baskets (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: California Indian Baskets in the Maryhill Museum (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Timbisha Shoshone Baskets (Photo Diary)
Indians 101: Nisqually and Puyallup baskets (photo diary)