[Mrs. C. Amy Cohn, Arts and Crafts of the Nevada Indians, from Nevada Historical Society Papers vol. 1 (1909)]

DAT-SO-LA-LEE,

The Washoe Indian Basket Maker.

ARTS AND CRAFTS OF THE NEVADA INDIANS.

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MRS. C. AMY COHN.

            The arts and crafts of the Nevada Indians were few, but in them they gained the greatest degree of perfection attainable in handicraft. If these Indians had been permitted to progress naturally toward civilization, they would have excelled in every aboriginal handicraft, with the abundant stores of stone, clay, and malleable metals at their command in prolific Nevada.

            The males essayed only to fashion the finest bows, perfect arrows, nets, traps, snares, and wove the softest rabbit-skin, blankets and robes.

            The art of basketry was perfected among our Indians over three hundred years ago. All industry leads to fine art. Basket-weaving commenced at the lowest point of industry, necessity, and passed beyond all art criticism. The utilitarian basket has some beauty to us, but an exalted specimen of this handicraft is the product of the natural inspiration, skill, and discrimination of its creator. The Shoshone Indians of our State made beautiful bottle-neck or vase-shaped baskets for ceremonial and mortuary uses. The Paiute women never gained a great degree of fineness, but they wove ingenious and graceful double-pyramidal shaped water-baskets or bottles which they covered or smeared with fragrant pine pitch, and these they traded with the Shoshones and Washoes for their fine basketry. The Washoe women were noted among all the Western Indian tribes for their fine baskets.

            A weaver was compelled to be historian, botanist, astronomer, mystic, religieuse, and reader-at-law. She must be a botanist to know when and where to gather the materials to make her weaving threads; an historian to embody in her work the facts of history, as the Washoes had no photographs, stone-carvings or skin-painting to record and transmit the history of their tribes—they did it only by word of mouth and in their weaving; a mystic to be able to exemplify their legends; a religieuse to know how to shape the basket used in their ceremonies. She must also be well versed in her tribal laws in order to keep strictly to the designs and symbols which she as a member of her family would be permitted to use, since patterns or designs were heirlooms or family crests, and the deviations or variations were worked out by the weaver to express the thought or intention she aimed to portray. All of these were interwoven in her productions governed by the laws of her people, with earnestness of purpose and faithfulness; her genius, inspired by nature, prompted her delicate, artistic fingers to portray the long-

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planned, well-thought-out subject for which she had no sketch or model. As their laws forbade them to copy or duplicate, when each basket was finished it was an original and unique gem of perfect art.

            When the stork visited a Washoe campoodie the infant was christened and bathed upon a basket-tray, laid for its first slumber upon a basket-pillow, coddled in a basket-cradle, played with basket-toys. Its mother brought the water for the household in basket-carriers; the food was cooked in baskets; the family was sheltered in a home of wattled and plaited basketry. The crops were harvested with basket-flails, garnered and stored in large baskets. Portables were moved in conical-shaped burden-baskets. The people ate from basket plates and trays, drank from basket-cups. Fish were caught with basket-nets and weirs, game with basket-snares and traps.

            When a male Washoe died his dignity and importance were measured by the number and fineness of the baskets thrown into his grave. When a female Washoe died a large burden-basket was placed upside down on her grave to show that her tasks were finished.

            One can thus understand what a basket meant to a Washoe and can believe that a Washoe housewife's capability was estimated by her skill as a weaver.

            The symbolism of the Washoe baskets was on geometrical lines, conventionalized to the accommodation of the stitch, abbreviated to the shape of the basket, and it conforms exactly to the size and form of the article decorated. Hence it is most satisfying to the student who, to gain insight into these wonders of handicraft, strives to go back as it were to the necessities of the aboriginal woman, tries to understand her primitive condition and her limitations, and thus to comprehend and value the beauty of this art.

            Through this symbolism of the baskets one must seek to feel the ideals and inspirations of the Indian woman, her longings for the beautiful, and thus by diligent search and effort must endeavor to save and decipher the evanescent records of her life and their meaning. From her handiwork itself one must strive always to learn as from the worker herself what she intended her baskets to represent, keeping the sign -form separate from the legends, remembering that by a slight change any line, form, or design can mean to her something which has splendid significance. To portray this symbolism she was obliged to abbreviate, illustrating the truth that art simplifies and generalizes ideas. Because of the technical limitations of her art or the character of the materials with which she must work, she was driven to this method, if indeed she did not invent it.

            In the same way, in the basket-weaver's mouth legends have melted down into a few words. And so to study first the symbolism and then the legend behind the symbolism one must first understand the person-

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ality of the maker, her environment, and her purposes. Her theory was: "The minimum variety in the technic, the maximum variety in the symbols." It is a question if one could find any two baskets alike in any tribe. I can safely assert that this is never the case among the Washoes.

            Let no one say we are enthusiastic over little things. It is no little thing to be thus brought near to nature, and to be able to penetrate to the inner life of our predecessors in the possession of the soil we now occupy. Advancing civilization should not forget the dying civilization of the aborigines, but should see in these baskets the evidences of an age when every article created by the hand of man had an artistic quality, when every housewife, by the labor of her own hands, made everything that could minister to use and comfort from the cradle to the grave; shaping them with such expression of natural art-feeling and unspoiled thought that the products of her skill have become priceless treasures in private collections and public museums.

            It is to the prospector who came to Washoe in search of gold that we owe the preservation of the remnants of this art, for in the 50's the Paiutes were bent upon exterminating the Washoes, who, upon the advent of white settlers, came under their protection.

            The famous "Dat- So-La –Lee," the last of the old-school Washoe basket-weavers, dwells in Carson City, the historic Capital of the "Battle-Born State." This Washoe woman will be remembered in our history for her masterpieces of aboriginal American art. She is over seventy years of age, is gross and ungainly in figure, with dark copper colored skin, straight black hair, artistically proportioned hands, and scintillating black eyes. "Dat-So-La-Lee" is of erratic temper, but docile to friends and generous to her people. She keeps her art still untainted, producing the most perfect and beautiful "day - gee – coops," or sacred ceremonial baskets. The design or symbolic ornamentation embodied in each stitch commemorates some fact in her past or portrays some of her poetic dreams. If we could look into her mind, we should find her chief incentive to be love of her tribe, its past, its laws, its myths, and its sorceries. These are her guiding motives.

            In the springtime " Dat- So-La -Lee" trudges over the hills and mountains to dig the well-developed roots of the bracken (Pteridium Aquilinum) from the inner stock of which she makes her black thread. And when she has traversed any section in such search the possibilities of that region are exhausted. In the summer, when the redbud (Cercis Occidentalis) is in its prime, red and lustrous, the bark, of which she makes her red thread, is gathered through many days of hard work and careful selection. Then again in the fall when all the sap has receded, she gathers the long straight boughs of the willow (Salix) for her white

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weaving threads and foundation sticks. The thread is taken from between the bark and the pith. After each long trudge she sits on the ground and with her teeth and finger-nails, assisted by an old knife or a fragment of broken glass in lieu of the ancient scraper of flint or obsidian, she prepares her materials for use. When prepared to her satisfaction, she rolls each variety of strands into balls or reels tied up securely and stores them away to be cured and seasoned for her next year's work. At all times she uses materials prepared the preceding year.

            The process of making one of her three-stick baskets is very tedious, but very interesting. Beginning with a small aperture at the center of the base of the basket, coil after coil is added by making an awl- hole near the side of the foundation sticks under the opposite stitch, into which she inserts the thread of fiber, which she prepares as she uses it. Each thread must be of the exact consistency as the preceding one. Somewhat coarser materials are used in the base of the basket than in the body, to give the base solidity in use. On each round one-half the stitches are seen on the outside, and as they are exhausted the ends are left on that side, but new threads are added so dexterously that when the basket is complete the ends are not noticeable. In the same manner foundation sticks are added as necessary. When all ends are trimmed, the inside of the basket is as attractive as the outside. As the form is continued upward, she uses finer threads, and in due time the embellishing symbols appear. As the days pass her fingers are cut and sorely wounded to the bone, her eyes are strained and dim, and her back aches. A year slips by, and the achievement is—a perfect masterpiece of art.

            For these baskets we claim every attribute of art—motive, use,

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EDITOR'S NOTE—At the close of her address Mrs. Cohn exhibited two of the baskets of Dat-So-La-Lee as examples of her wonderful skill. The descriptions are by Mrs. Cohn:

1.             L K 324. Migration. Weight 16 oz. Height 8 1/2 inches. Across orifice, 6 1/2 inches. Circumference, 35 inches. Colors: natural; light gold; white salix, black, Pteridium Aquilinum; red, Cercis Occidentatis. Stitches, 30 to the inch. Number of stitches in the basket, 60,000. Intended use, sacred ceremonies. Washoe name, Day-Gee-Coop. Interpretation of symbols by the weaver: "In the springtime when the birds fly away from the nest (i. e., when our children have grown up and left home), we will come to you, our neighbors." The design on this basket is a figure of a triangle—a home, nest, or tent—surrounded by little birds flying away in all directions. The figures around the orifice signify juxtaposition of houses, neighbors.

2.             L K No. 42. This basket is entitled "The Beacon Lights," and is meant to commemorate some important event when it became necessary to build large signal fires among the hills or mountains to call her tribe together in council or ceremonial. The design is a cross, which in Washoe basketry means light, fire, heat. In this instance it means fire. The other waved lines are to represent the glare and flames of the fire rising upward.

INDIAN BASKETS.

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symmetry, meaning, ,coloring, and, most wonderful of all, such perspective as we have not found or heard of in the productions of any other aboriginal artist.