ALASKA BASKETRY



BY

V. V. GAVANA





BANCROFT
LIBRARY



THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA





From the Collection of the Author



Alaska Basketry



BY

V. V. CAVANA




PRIVATELY PRINTED

BY THE

BEAVER CLUB OF OREGON

PORTLAND, OREGON

1917



First Publication



COPYRIGHT, 1917
By the BEAVER CLUB OF OREGON



One Hundred and Two Copies Printed This Copy is No..




DAVID STARR JORDAN, Honorary

FREDERICK WOODWARD SKIFF

CHARLES HARTSON LEADBETTER

JOHN RAYMOND WESTERVELT

JOHN FONERDEN WORCESTER

DEAN COLLINS

EDWARD SAMUEL REYNOLDS

HOWARD VAUGHN FISHER

GEORGE MARTIN ALLEN

CHARLES SIMPSON WEST

JOHN TYUS HOTCHKISS

ROBERT AUDREY MILLER



Introduction

Declaring itself to the public through this, its first
publication, the Beaver Club seeks to place itself in that
group of idealists that not only believes in dreams, but
also believes that by patient, sincere and reverent effort,
dreams may be made to come true.

There is a dream that many have held and toward
the realization of which many have labored and it is the
dream of a thing made glorious through the patient, per
ceiving labor of those who produce it. To such a vision,
and to the manifold works that have been done in the
striving towards its realization, the world owes the most
of whatever it can boast which is, beyond all else, rare
and lovely and infinitely to be desired.

In its present and future work, the Beaver Club hopes
to add, from Oregon, from the Pacific Northwest, a dis
tinctive and valuable contribution to humanity's store of
things rare and beautiful and, as nearly as possible, per
fect. The perfection sought is not the infinitely redupli
cated perfection that comes through the infallible accuracy
of machines, but the perfection that comes through con
scious and zealous artistic effort of persons inspired by
a desire to attain to a high and sweet ideal.

The books of the Beaver Club possibly may never
come to be loved and sought after because they are the
most beautiful of their kind in the world; but the Beaver
Club hopes to make them appreciatively beautiful to the
world because their production is to the Club, above every
thing else, a labor of profound love.

It is in keeping with the spirit of the Club that its
first publication should be Miss Cavana's monograph upon
Alaska Indian basketry; for her studies in this subject
have been quite as sincere a labor of love for her, as the



labor we have undertaken in launching the series of rare
publications of which this is the first.

Miss Cavana went to Alaska in 1897 and lived for
six years in the heart of the basket-producing districts,
and during her life in Alaska she pursued a study of this
art, then beginning to show only the first signs of dete
rioration, at first hand among traders, officials, Indians,
squaw men anywhere that information might be secured
that would be of a valuable nature.

Indian basketry, by the very nature of things, is
slipping rapidly into the category of those arts whose
products must have, besides their natural beauty, the
added charm of growing rarity; and this brings the sub
ject still more strikingly into harmony with the aims of
the Beaver Club in bringing out this limited edition of
its first publication.

The spirit that has inspired the members of the Club
has, we believe, been caught by the printers to whom the
work was intrusted in its final stages, and they have given
it the benefit of the most painstaking, sincere expression
of their handicraft, of which they are capable.

Other monographs that the Beaver Club will bring
out in future may achieve something more pretentious in
conception, arrangement or workmanship, but as they do
so, we will feel that it is, in a measure, a development
from the patient and serious effort that has been given
to make this first publication as nearly perfect in its
expression of our ideal as possible.

There can be no keener feeling of the gratification that
springs from an earnestly performed effort to produce
something that will add to the things rare and beautiful
in the world, than the feeling that the Beaver Club enjoys
in being able now to witness to kindred spirits in the
world, this, its first step toward the realization of the
great dream of rare, of lovely, of perfect workmanship.

THE CLUB EDITOR.




From the Collection of the Author




Alaska Basketry

By V. V. Cavana

ASKETRY is the oldest of the arts.
There are ethnologists who claim this
distinction for pottery, alleging that the
first basket was an attempt to imitate
in textile fabric the form of some crude
specimen of the primitive potter's work.
But basketry is far more ancient than the first basket.
Its earlier manifestation would be, perhaps, some brush
roughly intertwined to form a temporary shelter some
strips of bark or grass twisted to make a needed cord
a coarse mat to serve as a garment of sorts. The vessel
we call a basket would be a later and much more advanced
development of basketry.

Possibly the truth, if we could prove it, would lie in
the statement that basketry and pottery are twins, and
that they grew, co-eval, out of primitive woman's adapta
tion of her work to her environment. If she saw the track
of some animal in wet clay, dried and sun-hardened, and
capable of containing water, or if she found the moist
earth beneath her fire burned to a stonelike solidity, per
haps her brain would conceive and her hands execute a
vessel of clay for her own domestic use. While, if grass
was abundant, and trees and shrubs abounded in her sur
roundings, the idea of the basket would inevitably grow,
even through generations, and her fingers would labor to
materialize it.

Eleven



At any rate, whether the one or the other is older, or
whether they were co-existent according to environment,
both these developments of woman's genius are prehistoric
and universal. All of the past, and all of the earth's sur
face, are the field for the student of them. But in the
study of basketry, he will run upon the most serious diffi
culties. It was, and still is, practiced by all primitive
peoples; but they never were keepers of records, nor
makers of any but the crudest pictures. Delicate, beauti
ful, artistic in the highest degree their baskets may have
been; but the drawings they made of them (prehistoric
picture-writing and the like), are hideously crude. They
left us no history of themselves, much less of their basketry.
The basket itself is perishable, and civilization renders it
obsolete. It vanishes, like the people who made it.

But that it was made, we know from picture-writing
on the rocks; from scraps miraculously preserved in the
Mounds, in the cliff houses and caves of the Stone Age, in
mummy chambers ; from the imprint of the fabric in frag
ments of prehistoric pottery; and, after the dawn of
history, from allusions here and there in the scanty records
of contemporaneous civilization.

The aboriginal inhabitants of North America, and
particularly those on the Pacific Slope, have made baskets
in infinite variety from the days of the unknown Mound
Builders and the mysterious Cliff Dwellers and Aztecs.
Those of the later centuries are mentioned in the writings
of the missionary fathers and others of the earliest adven
turers who followed the Conquest, and who had the interest
to observe and the skill to record. Such mention is
usually casual and brief, sometimes no more than an allu
sion. In the midst of lives so strenuous, in which the

Twelve



struggle for mere existence from day to day was often
cruel, and sometimes in vain, the native basketry was a
negligible trifle. But that of the generations immediately
preceding our own has been studied and described, usually
by government scientists, so that for that period there is
no lack of reliable material for the student.

From Patagonia to Point Barrow, the native woman
has always made her baskets. Every possible weave, and
every available material appear. Soil and climate play
their inexorable part, and racial characteristics write
themselves legibly in the fabric. Odd diversities appear
side by side, and odder similarities at enormous distances.

No part of America offers greater variety, or greater
excellence of workmanship, than Alaska. Its natives
belong to four great families those of Athapascan stock
in the interior, those of Eskimauan stock on the northern
and western coasts, the various tribes of Southeastern
Alaska, who are of the Koloschan family, and the Haidas
of the south, who live only partly in Alaska and are of
Skittagetan stock. But different tribal branches of the
same stock often present marked ethnological differences,
and in the matter of their basketry, have frequently little
or nothing in common. For instance, the Aleut and the
Eskimo are both of Eskimauan stock; yet they differ in
appearance, disposition, intelligence, language and cus
toms; and in basketry they have no common traits, the
Eskimo producing a poor quality of coiled work, and the
Aleuts the finest woven baskets in the world. Thus it
is plain that a classification of Alaska basketry will differ
somewhat in its subdivisions from an ethnological classi
fication of the people who make the baskets. It is with
the former that this text deals briefly.

Thirteen



Alaska basketry includes both of the great types,
woven and coiled. But in numbers, and also in beauty,
the woven baskets far exceed the coiled variety. More
over, as tourists visit only Southeastern Alaska, and
there see only the woven spruce root native to the region,
with a few of the grass baskets, also woven, from the
Aleutian Islands, these two varieties are usually supposed
to comprise all of Alaska basketry.

It should be remembered that trade, intermarriage
and migration have rendered the geographical demarca
tions between the several varieties somewhat vague; but
in a general way, beginning at the extreme southeast of
the territory, the various sorts are produced as follows:

Locality Race Type Material

1. Southeastern Alaska Haida woven cedar bark, spruce and cedar

root

2. Southeastern Alaska Tlingit woven spruce root

3. Aleutian Islands Aleuts woven wild rye grass

4. Bristol Bay and

Kuskokwim River Eskimo woven wild rye grass

5. Norton Sound and

Arctic Ocean Eskimo coiled grass or willow

6. Upper Yukon River Tinne coiled spruce and tamarack root,

willow

7. Lower Yukon Tinn< both spruce root, willow, grass

1. Haidas. Following this grouping, the first bas
kets encountered will be those of the Haidas, who live
partly in British Columbia and partly in Alaska, in a
coast and island region of magnificent cedar and spruce
forests. From these splendid trees they secure the
materials to produce three distinct varieties of woven
basket. The cedar furnishes an inner bark, which, after
proper manipulation and seasoning, gives long flat brown
papery strips. These the Haida women weave in flat
checkerwork into soft mats, bags and baskets. By cross
ing and diverting the elements traveling in one direc-

Fourteen




From the Collection of the Author



tion of the weave, they produce a very pretty openwork
variant of the checkerwork method; and certain slight
changes in the handling of the strips give a twilled effect
that may be repeated at intervals with pleasing results.

Iron stain, copper stain and alder stain will produce
respectively black, green and red; and strips thus stained,
introduced at intervals, furnish color decoration.

From the peoples to the south, they have learned to
use the wrapped twined weave, which is native to the
northern part of Vancouver Island, but which has been
adopted all along the coast from Oregon to Prince of
Wales Island. In this latter region, the Haidas make
frequent use of it for small baskets intended for light
use, or for ornamental purposes. It consists of a series
of upright warp elements with two woof elements travel
ing around the fabric horizontally, as in the case of the
plain twined weave. But in the wrapped twine, one of
these woof elements remains always on the inside of the
basket, while the other is wrapped around each warp and
the inside woof where they lie together. The warp and
the inside woof are of cedar bark, while the wrapping
strand, covering the others entirely on the outside, is
usually of squaw grass. This produces, if the grass is
properly cured, a fine ivory-colored mosaic effect that is
really very pretty, even in the cruder pieces. There used
to be a weaver or two among the remnant of the Haidas,
who carried these baskets to an extreme of beauty and
delicacy; and I have in mind a little round, covered
treasure-basket, about three inches in diameter, from the
region immediately south of Ketchikan, that shows a
thousand and fifty stitches to the square inch of its
exquisite fabric.

Sixteen



So much for the two varieties made from cedar.
From the spruce they gather and prepare the root, pre
cisely in the Tlingit manner, of which I shall speak
presently, and weave water-tight vessels in the close plain
twined weave. By using a stronger, coarser fiber than
the Tlingit ordinarily do, they produce a heavier, more
rigid basket. It is also from spruce root, in a finer
fiber, and an ornamental variant of the plain twine, that
they weave the famous Haida hats, beloved of basket
collectors. These hats are splendid specimens of bas
ketry, made from selected root by the best weavers, in
a certain prescribed manner, the description of which
would entail too much detail for the purposes of this writ
ing. They are graceful in shape, perfect in line and
finish. Color was not inwoven, but was painted on the
surface in totemic design the only example, by the way,
of totemic design in color in this basketry. Like many
other splendid types, they are no longer made, and the
searcher for them must go to old collections.

2. Tlinget. The work of the Haidas being thus
sketchily treated, a brief account of the processes of the
Tlingits is next in order. They are the group placed
second in the table, and they comprise a number of
tribes, with all their numerous clans and minor divisions,
inhabiting the coast to the north and then to the west of
the Haida country. They were the superlative basket-
makers of Alaska; for while the next division mentioned,
the Aleuts, produced some pieces of almost unbelievable
fineness, it must be borne in mind that they worked in
a more tractable material grass. The Tlingits prob
ably wove more baskets than all the other Alaskans
combined; and their excellence was recognized by those

Seventeen



most severe critics, the Alaskans themselves; for Tlingit
baskets were articles of barter with remote tribes, before
the presence of increasing numbers of white people had
given a larger market, with its attendant evils.

The Tlingit woman shaped her basket definitely for
its intended use, and employed the technique (of which
she practiced five forms) prescribed by tradition for that
especial purpose. Thus was produced an amazingly
interesting variety, from the tiny shot-pouch and the
dainty covered treasure-basket, to the yard-wide berry-
tray, and the huge twenty-five-gallon oil- storage basket.
Perfection of workmanship was characteristic of these
women. Even the big water-tight oil baskets were as
smooth in texture as a piece of cloth, perfectly sym
metrical in shape, bordered at the top with one or
another of the recognized designs for the purpose, and
finished off with wonderful precision in one of several
styles. The border might be merely one or two bands
of color (red, black or purple), or it might be, and in
the case of the Chilkats was sure to be, a geometric
design without color, effected in a raised pattern by a
slight change in the stitch. These big baskets were
woven of so fine a fiber that a square inch on the sur
face of them will sometimes contain one hundred stitches ;
and their texture is so flexible that when not in use, they
may be folded flat like a paper bag to be laid aside until
needed.

Even in excellence there are degrees; and among the
Tlingits, the Chilkats and the Yakutats were the best
weavers. But a good basket is not a matter of skillful
weaving only. The selection and preparation of the mate
rials was a slow and laborious process. The Tlingit women,

Eighteen




From the Collection of the Author



according to Emmons, selected a spruce tree in healthy
condition, from one to two feet in diameter, and pros
pected with a fire-hardened stick for the far-reaching
growth of new root. When found, this was carefully dug
out with the hands and the stick, sometimes in lengths as
great as twenty feet, and in thickness about the size of the
little finger. These lengths were coiled and carried home,
and inside of a day must be barked, which was done by
steaming over coals, or in mud under a bed of coals, and
then drawing the strip between the tines of a cleft stick.
This process required judgment and skill, as too much,
too little, or too dry heat were all fatal to the quality of the
cured fiber; and too little pressure on the tines of the
"eena" failed to remove the bark, while too much pressure
injured the surface and destroyed the prized lustre of the
outer wood.

After removing the bark, the women coiled the root
again and left it to season. The gathering was done in the
spring, and the wood seasoned during the summer months,
when the demands of berrying, fishing, and other forms of
food collecting and storage, were imperative. In the dull
winter days, the root was split and the basket woven. The
commercial demand for Tlingit baskets is brisk and not
discriminating, and the habits of the natives have changed
considerably since the influx of the white people. Conse
quently, weaving is now carried on at all seasons, so that as
many baskets as possible may be made for sale. This of
course cuts out the long period of seasoning for the wood,
which explains one form of deterioration in the baskets
of the last fifteen years or so. But formerly, when there
was time for all things in order, the weaving was a winter
occupation. The coils were soaked, and then split with

Twenty



teeth, thumb-nail, and a sharp shell. Three qualities of
fiber resulted, of which the outside was the toughest and
glossiest, and therefore the best, and the inside, or heart,
was too pithy for use, and was thrown away. Needless
to say, the entire work, from beginning to end, required
patience, strength, judgment, skill all those qualities
that make good work anywhere in the world.

The split root must be soaked again before weaving,
during which it was kept damp by moistening the fingers
occasionally. The work began at what was to be the
center of the bottom, in the following manner: Several
strands of the correct estimated length for the basket in
view were caught together at the middle by a half hitch
of another strand, to be used as woof. The warp splints
were then spread open, as the radii of a circle, and the
woof strand twined in and out among them for a few
rounds, thus forming a tiny circle. New warp must
then be introduced between the strands of that already
in use. This was done by folding the new strand at
the middle, and catching the loop over the turn of the
inside woof element, and then working the new strands
into the fabric on the next round. Examination of the
bottom of any good basket makes this plain, although
the explanation sounds a trifle complicated.

As the close plain twined weave (wush-tookh-ar-kee,
close together work,) is the necessary foundation for the
characteristic Tlingit form of decoration, its technique
should be understood. After the circular (or, very rarely,
oval,) base has been completed, and the upright walls
are beginning, numerous warp elements stand up like
a stiff fringe around the circumference of the basket, and
two woof elements are twined in and out, over and under

T wen ty-on e



each warp element. As each woof strand comes to the
outside, it takes a half turn over the other woof strand,
between warps, always in the same direction; so that the
two woof strands, if they could be seen without the warp,
would form a twisted cord of perfect regularity. In
fact, this can be seen sometimes, in case of a break in
the fabric, which allows the warp to slip out, leaving the
cord of the woof plainly visible. It often occurs in the
delicate grass baskets of the Aleuts, who use precisely
the same stitch. This weave produces a flexible water
tight vessel, which, as said before, may be folded like a
paper bag when not in use.

For baskets in which no colored decoration was in
tended, such as the cooking baskets and the storage
baskets, a weave called khark-ghee-sut (translated by
Emmons as "between, or in the middle of/') was used.
It consisted of alternating rows of the plain twine and
the checkerwork, and therefore effected a saving of one-
fourth of the woof material. Thus, one round of the
work would consist of the upright warp, with two woof
strands twining over them; the next round would con
sist of only one woof strand passing over and under the
warp; the third round would be a repetition of the first,
and the fourth would be a repetition of the second* This
weave was water-tight, and was frequently used in the
bottoms of baskets of all kinds, except by the Yakutats.
In new pieces, it appears rather rough and crude; but
in the splendid old relics of a vanished age, the rows of
twined work were forced down so closely together that
the intervening one-strand row can barely be discerned.

In some vessels, such as those used for draining the
water out of some kinds of food, an openwork effect

Twenty-two




V



From the Collection of the Author



was desirable, and in others it was used for ornament.
Again, if a water-tight basket was not necessary, the
openwork saved an appreciable quantity of material.
The Tlingit used such a weave, calling it wark-kus-
khart, or eyeholes, and obtained it by diverting the warp.
Every other warp element was deflected to the right,
the alternate ones turning to the left. This caused the
warp to cross continually, like lattice work, at an angle
of about forty-five degrees. At each crossing, the warp
elements were caught by the two woof elements of the
plain twine. The result was an open fabric, diagonal
warp, horizontal rows of woof, and hexagonal mesh.
The Haidas, as noted before, got much the same effect
in their one-strand woof.

A fourth style of technique in practice by the Tlingits
was hiktch-hee-har-see, which required the same elements
as the plain twine. But the two woof strands inclosed
two warps at each turn, instead of one, and on the next
round of the work, split these pairs, inclosing two as
before, but not the same two. This work, like the plain
twine, presents the same appearance on the wrong side
as on the right. It produced a raised diagonal or twilled
effect, and by manipulating it in connection with the
plain twine, geometrical patterns were obtained in the
fabric. The function of this weave was that of orna
ment. It appears in the borders of the Chilkat storage
baskets, and on the brims of the Haida hats.

Uh-tahk-ka (twisted) was a three-strand weave,
that is, it required three woof strands. Each passed
back of one warp, and then over two warps. In work
ing, it showed two woofs on the outside of the fabric at
all times, and one on the inside; and when completed,

Twenty-four



it presented a raised cord on the right side, while the
wrong side of the work showed no trace of it. It was
both strong and highly ornamental, and was usually
introduced at points in the work where the heaviest
strain of use would fall, such as the base of the walls
of the basket, and the top. Alternate rows of it pro
duced a corded border that was very handsome. The
hat crowns offer the only examples of its use for the
entire fabric.

These are the five weaves practiced by Tlingit weav
ers. The strawberry weave of which we sometimes hear
is merely plain twine, with one of the woof strands
colored. This brings the color to the outside in alternate
stitches, and so produces a spotted effect, like the seeded
surface of the wild strawberry. It was used in bands
for decorative effect, and was especially characteristic of
certain forms of basket, such as the large berry tray.
Also, it often appeared in the bottoms of other baskets.

One of the most interesting features of the Tlingit
basket is the finish at the top. When the desired height
had been attained, some neat and secure method of fast
ening off the work was a necessity, both for beauty and