while those of private students are equally rich; there is also an abundant literature. Notwithstanding all this, the subject presents many unsolved problems.
Baskets can be readily classified as woven or coiled (sewed). The basic concepts for these different classes seem to have nothing in common, from which it is fair to assume that they have separate histories. Under these heads many techniques may be distinguished.[1]
From our point of view, coiled basketry reaches its highest development in California, where the Pomo are generally given the first rank. Aesthetically considered, these baskets are probably the finest in the whole world. From this center, coiling extends to the interior highlands among the Shoshoni-speaking tribes, thence northward through the inland salmon area and the Déné portion of Canada. Even the Eskimo of Alaska use it, and also the natives of eastern Siberia. To the east, it stops in the plains, but extends southward among the Pima, Navajo, Apache, and other non-pueblo-dwelling tribes. Of the Pueblo peoples only one section of the Hopi uses the process and elsewhere there are but the crudest of attempts. In Mexico the technique disappears and does not come to notice again until we reach Patagonia. While in California a few of the coast tribes were coilers, the main distribution is inland, for beginning with the upper part of California, the entire coast belt including the Aleutian chain is exclusively devoted to woven basketry. In the eastern part of North America coiling is rare, a few of the northern Algonkin tribes following the lead of their Déné neighbors.
Notwithstanding the high development in the coil area, it is itself a part of the great western twined area. (Twine is a form of woven basketry.) The Pomo, for example, also make fine baskets of this weave, which can be said of most coil workers. In other words, coiled basketry seems to be a smaller area overlying a larger one of twined basketry. The Pueblo peoples do not make it, but do produce a kind of wickerwork like the tribes of northern Mexico, while their non-Pueblo neighbors, the Apache, Walapai, etc., make twined as well as coiled baskets.
- ↑ Kissell, 1916. I.
