Smoke Signals June 1992 Page 6 . .
BASKETS WEAVE PRIDE IN POMO INDIAN
HERITAGE
by Tom Harney
Smithsonian News Services
Appreciation of Native American art, especially
during the past 30 years, continues to rise. For the
Pomo Indians of northern California, however, their
unparalleled artistry in basket weaving has created a
demand for their work that has lasted more than a
century.
"Since the 1880s, when Pomo baskets first became
sought after, the Pomo have changed their life-styles
enormously," says Dr. JoAllyn Archambault, director
of the American Indian Program at the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of Natural History in
Washington D.C. The Pomo isolated groups of
people, who often spoke different languages and
numbered in the thousands - once lived from the
bounty of the land in a region north of San Francisco.
Today, Archambault says, the remaining Pomo
participate in society just like other Americans, yet
"they still value and honor those among them who
weave baskets."
The baskets, too, continue to carry high value. Pomo
weavers combine artistry with natural materials, such
as bird feathers and shells, to create baskets in the
1870s, she says, the baskets immediately commanded
high prices. Similarly, new Pomo baskets might sell
for as much as $1,000. Today the older baskets might
sell for more than $10,000.
Scholarly studies of the first Indian basket craze,
which lasted from about 1876 to the 1920s, Archam
bault says, are adding to understanding of the Pomo
basketry tradition and the role it played in relation
ships between whites and Indians at the turn of the
century.
"The number of Pomo basket weavers has de
creased," she says, "but not their skill and artistic
vision. Basket makers usually have more requests
than they can fill and many customers wait months
before receiving their orders."
To make their famous sun baskets, the Pomo covered
a basket completely with the vivid red feathers of the
pileated woodpecker until the surface resembled the
smoothness of the bird itself. With the feathers - 30
to SO every inch - the Indians fastened beads to the
basket's border and hung pendants of polished
abalone shell from the basket itself. Pomo women
sometimes spent months or years making such gift
baskets.
Pomo baskets were not only gifts, Archambault says.
Baskets were central to Pomo life. Woven baskets
(without feathers) of different sizes and shapes were
made mostly by women for a variety of purposes:
Pomo children were cradled in baskets; acorns -
major food staple were harvested in great conical
burden baskets; and wicker work fish traps and quail
traps - made by Pomo men - helped furnish other
seasonal foods. In fact, food was stored, cooked and
served in baskets, some watertight.
A few Pomo groups lived in houses "constructed like
huge coarse -baskets with roofs that were virtually
immense shallow inverted basket lids," wrote Otis T.
Mason, a late 19th-century curator of ethnology at the
Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. Mason was
one of the first Americans to take note of Pomo
baskets, following the 1876 Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia. That exposition showcased some of the
Indian cultures of the Western states and established
widespread awareness of baskets made by those
American Indians.
"By the turn of the century, middle-class white
American was enthralled with Native American arts
and crafts, especially basketry," says Sherrie Smith
Ferri, an anthropologist who is completing her doc
toral studies at the University of Washington in
Seattle.
A member of the Dry Creek Band of the Pomo,
Smith-Ferri participated in a recent scholarly forum
organized by the National Museum of Natural History.
She is one of a growing number of Native Americans
bring fresh perspective to studies of American Indian
art with the use of Smithsonian and other museum
collections.
"Historic Pomo baskets are still sought after, ad
mired, coveted, displayed and studied," Smith-Ferri "
says. Major collections of these baskets can be seen at -the
National Museum of Natural History, the
Smithsonian's National Museum of the American
Indian in New York City, the Field Museum of Natural
History in Chicago, the American Museum of Natural
History in New York and the Lowie Museum of the
University of California, Berkeley.
At the National Anthropological Archives of the
Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, Smith-Ferri
studied the correspondence between Mason and
collectors in California - men such as J.W. Hudson of
, Ukiah, Calif., whose medical practice brought him into
contact with Western Indians for almost 20 years.
Hudson bought many Pomo baskets for the
Smithsonian and other major Eastern museums.
"Following the movement of Anglo-American settlers
into California in 1850," Smith-Ferri says, "the Pomo
people began to suffer drastic declines in population,
severe cultural disruption, loss of homelands, oppres
sion and conflict. Their hunting and gathering life
style was no longer viable, and they began working as
laborers on white-owned farms and ranches that were
their former homelands.
"Such as the backdrop against which the Pomo basket
business began booming in 1890," she says. "The
archival correspondence paints a picture of three
general types of dealers and collectors: amateur
enthusiasts, buyers for curio dealers and scientific
collectors. The first two groups usually visited the
areas where the Pomo lived, quickly and indiscrimi
nately bought baskets, and then left with their booty.
"Scientific collectors usually worked for museums,"
Smith-Ferri continues, "attempting to assemble
documented type of collections of Pomo baskets with
specimens that were thought to be purely aboriginal.
In contrast to the amateur enthusiasts or curio buyers,
these collectors spent much more of their time with
Pomo people. Some lived in towns near the Pomo."
The basket business, on the part of the dealers and
collectors, she says, "was very competitive, if not
cutthroat." As demand for the baskets increased, the
baskets became more expensive. Hudson amassed a
collection of more than 300 Pomo baskets that he sold
to the Smithsonian for $3,150 in 1898. He complained
in an 1889 letter to Mason that "when the Pomo basket
first made itself known and appreciated by lovers of
the unique, baskets could be had for a few dimes."
In 1892, Henry W. Henshaw, an ethnologist for the
Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology, traveled
to Ukiah to buy Pomo baskets for the Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. "Tomorrow I shall try to get
some baskets. The fine ones are out of reach -and I
may have trouble getting any. Speculators are here
and will pay any price," he wrote to a colleague in
Washington D.C.
According to Smith-Ferri, it became a common
practice among collectors and dealers to commission , .
baskets from the best weavers. In these contracts, the
person commissioning the basket would often furnish
the weaving materials, or pay weavers a small sum
while they worked on baskets.
For example, Mason asked Hudson for more infor
mation about a basket he was illustrating in his
basketry book. Hudson wrote: "It was made to order
for me by a Pomo expert, she following her own taste
in every detail -was told- to name her own price.
(Joseppa Dick, the weaver) commenced work Dec. 16,
: 1893 and worked assiduously and solely (except
housework) on this piece, finishing July 15, 1894. She
complained bitterly of the confinement and tedium and
has since refused (to weave) a duplicate at $100."
Dick's basket is now considered a masterpiece.
Even though the dealers and collectors exploited the
lucrative basket market, "it still paid well enough to
provide an important source of income to Pomo
women at a time when hunting and gathering were no
longer feasible and other ways of survival were severely
limited by the surrounding white society," Smith-Ferri
SaVS W'flf. ..tlV Ti.Tl
Money aside, the high value Pomo Indians themselves
continue to place on their art and artisans, Archam
bault says, provides an important lesson to all Ameri
cans. Artists are to be revered for the beauty they
create and the cultural knowledge they preserve and
pass on to succeeding generations.
V f v
"I
Smithsonian News Service Photo courtesy of
the National Anthropological Archives
Pomo Indians gathered acorns a dietary staple with
woven conical baskets and utensils. Some Pomo baskets
made for foodstuffs were watertight.