How to make baskets . orn is a staple article of food amongseveral tribes, but before it is fit for the humanstomach it must first be boiled. How is the In-dian, who has no pottery and who never saw aniron kettle, to boil her food ? In California thereare still to be seen a few squaws cooking in water-tight baskets after the primitive method of theirancestors. Stones heated at a neighboring fire aretossed into the water until it is brought to the boil-ing point, and there it is kept by the addition ofmore hot stones until the acorns are cooked. Nowall the bitterness is gone, and when dry again
How to make baskets . orn is a staple article of food amongseveral tribes, but before it is fit for the humanstomach it must first be boiled. How is the In-dian, who has no pottery and who never saw aniron kettle, to boil her food ? In California thereare still to be seen a few squaws cooking in water-tight baskets after the primitive method of theirancestors. Stones heated at a neighboring fire aretossed into the water until it is brought to the boil-ing point, and there it is kept by the addition ofmore hot stones until the acorns are cooked. Nowall the bitterness is gone, and when dry again theyare ready to be pounded into meal. The cookingbasket of the Hoopa Valley Indians, for example,is a thing of beauty, with mountain peaks andflowing streams on its shapely sides. How repul-sively ugly are the civilized cooks machine-madekitchen utensils compared with these hand-wroughtvessels in which the Indian woman delights!With genuine artistic feeling she fashions herkettle from shreds of the red bud, mountain. < ^ in .< Q o tn 4) > re ^ W u T3 u 1) I/) re u si < ^ hj ^ P-, Pi 1J K -O « 4J < — -ac X w <n «J 8 bt £ 0, * ia p a <o WHAT THE BASKET MEANS TO THE INDIAN I$I grasses, colored with natural dyes, and stems ofthe maiden hair fern, the whole often representingweeks of work. Ages before people had pottery to cook in theyhad basketry, which is, indeed, the oldest and themost universally practised handicraft known. Per-haps a hunter returned home hungry one day inthe far away past, and his wife, anxious to hastendinner for her impatient lord, coated her cookingbasket with clay that she might set it directly overthe fire without danger of burning. Imagine thewomans surprise and joy to find on removing itfrom the embers after dinner that she had a basketplus an earthenware pot! Thus directly frombasketry was pottery evolved. One finds the sameshaped vessels of clay as of wicker work among theZuni and other potters, and the same
Size: 1278px × 1954px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidhowtomakebaskets00whit
