A Bit About Bannock Baskets

 A Bit About Bannock Baskets.*

*Not to be confused with Scottish baskets used in the preparation of bannock bread. This is a discussion of baskets from the Bannock of the Plateau region of North America. For more information on the people, see their website, Shoshone-Bannock Tribe.

A September 2021 visit for identification of Native American basketry at Shelburne Museum in Vermont led to my attribution of probably Bannock, possibly Shoshone, for a coiled willow basket.  The basket in question, item number 1947-17.5, reminded me of Bannock baskets in the Southwest Museum collection at the Autry Museum of the American West, last seen by me in person in 2009, and not currently present on their online collection database. The Bannock County Historical Museum and the Idaho Museum of Natural History do not have collections online, although they both have ethnographic collections, and the Idaho Museum reports having an excellent collection of Shoshonean basketry materials. The American Museum of Natural History has a Bannock basket collected by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, donated in 1900, but its features are not all the same as the one in Vermont.  

Bannock or Shoshone Basket, date unknown. Plant materials,
 possibly willow, 6 ¾ x 6 ¾ x 6 ¾ in. Gift of Electra Havemeyer Webb.
 1947-17.5. Photo: Nancie Ravenel, Shelburne Museum.

Rim detail, Shelburne Museum
1947-17.5. Photo: BBP

Shelburne Museum's basket is round with an oval start, it has clipped weft ends with a few tucked weft ends, occasional split stitches, and a whipstitched rim. It is probably coiled of willow. Plus, it has four cloth imbricated stitches. Most indicative of placing the basket in the Bannock/Shoshone area is its three rod stacked foundation. According to Whiteford (North American Indian Arts, 2001), "Idaho Shoshoni basketry includes three-rod stacked coiling with willow." 

I needed some baskets for comparison. How about checking America's attic, the Smithsonian Institution, for Bannock baskets? I hit pay dirt! A quick online search of the National Museum of the American Indian collection brought up 175 "Possibly Bannock (attributed)" baskets, all collected by William (Willem) Wildschut, an anthropologist, during fieldwork sponsored by the Museum of the American Indian (MAI) in 1924.  Modifying the search, "Bannock basket coiled" resulted in a list of 104 items!  "Fort Hall Reservation; Bannock County, Bingham County, Caribou County, Power County; Idaho; USA" is the listed place of collection for the baskets, with some specifically noted as being from the Cook Drug Store and Indian Curio Shop in Pocatello, Idaho.

Here's the link to that search:

https://americanindian.si.edu/collections-search/search?edan_q=bannock%20basket%20coiled

Interestingly, most of the baskets with colored designs in this collection list "paint" as a material. One example of this is basket with cover 13/1394. This round basket has a three rod stacked foundation that is clearly visible in the photo, occasional split stitches, and an oval start that can be seen on the lid. Looking at the photograph and not holding the basket in front of me, I find it hard to differentiate potential paint from a dyed element. In my experience, baskets with painted areas usually have paint spread on neighboring stitches, and no paint on the weft portion stitched into the coil. On 13/1394, extra paint on other stitches, or within the coil, can't be seen. Again, I'm looking at the online photo and not at the basket directly.  And then, there is basket jar 13/1288, which does have paint, blotchy paint, in red and green. This also had three rods stacked, a few split stitches, and possibly a tucked under stitch seen on the left edge of the photo. 

Detail,Cloth stitch detail,
Shelburne Museum
1947-17.5 Photo: BBP.

There was no paint detected on the Shelburne's basket. However, there is cloth woven into it, and cloth was sometimes used in Bannock and Shoshone baskets (Turnbaugh and Turnbaugh, Indian Baskets, 1986 edition). In my next search of the Smithsonian online collections, "Bannock basket cloth" came up with ten items. In nine of these, the cloth was either a carrying strap or wrappings on cradle baskets.  The tenth is basket tray 13/1363, a shallow bowl with inconsistent stitches, a few tucked weft ends, and black wool cloth used on the rim. This is unlike our basket, in which there are four cloth imbricated stitches in a row on the exterior.

Next, a search on "Shoshone basket coiled," which brought up 40 items, including Northern Paiute, Western Shoshone from Nevada, and some attributed to Koso (Panamint/Shoshone) from Death Valley, CA.  About a dozen of the Shoshone baskets look like the Bannock baskets recently seen.

The first basket, 12/2032, looks suspiciously like those in the Bannock search. This bowl with handles was made by Mrs. Pawagee-Tattagit, Eastern Shoshone, and collected on the "Wind River Reservation, Fremont County, Hot Springs County; Wyoming; USA."  This was also collected by Wildschut, on a 1923 MAI expedition.  It is coiled of willow with a three rod stacked foundation, a few split stitches, and a few tucked weft stitches.

Other notable baskets in this search are four gambling trays, three collected by Wildschut in 1923 from the Wind River Reservation: 12/2103, owned by Mrs. Mujawo, Eastern Shoshone, with a painted central design and a rim of cross-stitched willow wefts over a band of red wool cloth, and a three rod stacked foundation; 12/2108 owned by Mrs. Hibitsitsi, Shoshone, with a red wool cloth rim with overcast willow stitches, and a three rod stacked foundation; 12/2109 made by Susie Peahrora (Mrs. Pedro Peahrora), Eastern Shoshone, with black wool at the rim, stacked rod foundation indeterminate.  The fourth gambling basket tray 1/112 was purchased by George Heye in 1906 from Frank Covert, the collection history is unknown and it is from the "Great Basin region, USA (inferred)."  It has remnants of red wool cloth at the rim, with overcast willow stitches. It does not appear to have a three rod stacked foundation, although it's hard to tell precisely from the photo.  https://americanindian.si.edu/collections-search/objects/NMAI_10959?destination=edan_searchtab%3Fedan_q%3D1/112

With the presence of the cloth, the occasional split stitches, a few tucked weft stitches, an oval start, and the most characteristic three rod stacked foundation, it seems like this basket from Shelburne Museum is, indeed, probably Bannock or Shoshone.  It's been fun investigating.

Oval start detail, view of base.
Photo: Nancie Ravenel, Shelburne Museum.

Thank you to Shelburne Museum staff Nancie Ravenel, Barbara Rathburn, and Leslie Wright. This visit was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Vietnamese Bamboo Structures and Baskets

 In line with the late Prince Philip being photographed with baskets, I snapped a shot of Colin Powell off of the television that was shown on CNN Breaking News when he passed away, October 18, 2021.

Powell is leaning against a structure in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. It looks to be constructed of bamboo and made in a wicker weave. It is similar in construction to a mat seen in a photograph below.

Echoing this construction is "Floating Nest," a new building with a bamboo basketry-type exterior screen by Atelier NgNg, a research and design firm with offices in Los Angeles and Saigon.  

Read about it here: https://worldarchitecture.org/article-links/egfnz/this-vietnamese-narrow-house-by-atelier-ngng-is-clad-by-woven-bamboo-screen-made-of-vertical-sticks.html

Detail, Floating Nest

Below, an undated photo from Viet Nam News shows a bamboo house with construction more like Atelier NgNg's Floating Nest than Powell's building.

https://www.chinadailyhk.com/articles/155/4/68/1538909867394.html

Goggling "Vietnamese bamboo structures" led to all types of beautiful and creative contemporary structures, wherein bamboo is lauded as the building material of the future.  To find some older photos, I dove into archives and found Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive, whose copyright statement says: 

"The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University....If using these resources for writing purposes, they should be cited appropriately to include The Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University and the individual collection from which they were used." https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/resources/digital.php

Although I have not found more on Vietnamese bamboo construction with limited searching today, I found hundreds of photos with bamboo in the archives, and will share a few with baskets here. These are all cropped. Interested readers are encouraged to visit the online archives to see more. Thank you to the Archives, including soldiers and others who donated their photographs.

Courtesy of The Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University:

Qui Nhon Vietnam, 1955
Rufus Philips Collection,
VA066498

Basket hanging from a bamboo ceiling,
 W.B. Bartow Collection,
VA009374

Basketry mat, 1970, Douglas Pike
Collection, VA002376

Bamboo building, no date, Earl R. Rhine
Collection, VA061131

Roadside Baskets, Hugh Manes Collection,
 VA016566

Prince Philip

On the passing of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (10 June 1921 - 9 April 2021), the media has responded with many photos of him. These two, with baskets, were featured in The Guardian.

  

Above: Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth, and Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2014. (Photo - Arthur Edwards.)  

Below: Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at a polo match in 2018 sitting in wicker chairs. (Photo - Antony Jones.)

 

tttt

The Easter Bunny Comes to My House

 I have three great Easter baskets to share.

First, the oldest. A two-piece rabbit basket which was purchased in China in the 1980s by my grandmother-in-law. It is plaited of bamboo, with slivers of bamboo for ears, and glass eyes.

I purchased the second basket in Germany in 1991. 

It is not German made, I would suspect an Asian origin for it. This bright yellow basket is woven of dyed grass in a twill weave. The purple bunny and flowers are embroidered onto the basket with long stitches of a shiny dyed plant material (it is not raffia). The twilled stitching inset in the ear is a nice touch.

The third bunny is rattan wickerwork. I like the soft pastel colors, the clever way the body is shaped, and the sway of the ears, as if they are twitching. It's ornamented with black plastic eyes and a pink ribbon. It was purchased at Cost Plus in the late 1980s, and I suspect it is of Asian origin as well.

It's always a happy Easter with these bunny baskets. It's even happier when they get filled with chocolate goodies!

Identifying Intrusive, Non-Indigenous Basketry in Museum Collections

My esteemed colleague Ellen Pearlstein and I recently had an article, "Identifying Intrusive, Non-Indigenous Basketry in Museum Collections,"  published in Museum Management and Curatorship online. The link is at the bottom of this post. The print version is pending; Volume 36, Issue 1. First, a bit of background on how it came to be.

Ellen and I collaborate every two years, when the graduate students in the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials program work on the basketry component of their training. Professor Pearlstein works with Indigenous weavers to introduce her students to the art of basketry, and borrows baskets from tribal museums for the students to treat. The students research the baskets, analyze the conservation issues, propose conservation treatments, and perform them. Prior to performing the treatments, a few basket weavers and scholars such as myself are invited to examine the baskets, listen to the students' proposals, and lend our expertise.

On one such day in 2018, I cautioned that one of the baskets was not, in fact, Native American. This agreed with what one of Ellen's consulting Kumeyaay weavers had said, that it was not a Native Southern California basket. Made of raffia and rattan (fibers not native to North America), it was what I had seen called an "Indian School" basket in various museum catalog records. I explained some basics to her:  sometimes they were made from kits by non-natives during social gatherings akin to quilting bees; their manufacture was often linked to the American Arts and Crafts Movement; I'd never been able to find good references in the literature. Intrigued, she wanted more information. If there weren't references, then we should pursue this. And we did.                           

                                      Photo: Rattan imported from China (B. Potter).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Detail, raffia stitches on a rattan foundation. Photo: B. Potter.
Courtesy Museum of Riverside, Riverside CA; basket A430.8

From November 2019 to late February 2020, we visited museum collections and gathered our data. Then we had the COVID-19 lockdown. Future museum visits were prohibited, and museum staff members were absent from their collections or limited in their ability to provide information to us. Thus we proceeded with which I alliteratively dubbed "the Pearlstein & Potter Pandemic Paper."

open access to the article:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09647775.2021.1873828

Alaska's "I Voted" Stickers

This year, Alaska's "I Voted" stickers celebrate the women of Alaska using bright and fun illustrations.  There are four designs representing people of different areas and their regional dress. A southeastern woman wears a flowing button blanket as she drums; from the far north, a musher in a parka appears with her dogs and sled; a woman in a floral kuspuq (overshirt) throws her hands up in delight; and three pairs of legs, one in heels, one in mukluks, one in sneakers, represent urban women in a voting booth. These cheerful stickers can be found at https://www.elections.alaska.gov/Core/ElectionStickers.php

The patriotic stickers salute Alaska's Native languages too, as the "I Voted" script appears in Aleut, Alutiiq, Cup’ig, Gwich’in, Koyukon, Northern Inupiaq, Nunivak and Yup'ik, plus English, Spanish, and Tagalog.

According to the Election Website, "The State of Alaska Division of Elections (DOE) unveiled the 2020 'I Voted' stickers and the powerful significance behind the artwork. Created by beloved Alaskan artist, Barbara Lavallee, the stickers feature her stylized depiction of the diversity, strength, and power of Alaskan women." Lavallee is known for her children's book illustrations, including Mama, Do You Love Me and Papa Do You Love Me, which feature Inuit characters.

                                                                                                                

The website encourages Alaskans "to continue paving a way to justice and equality for all generations to come. And in 2020, the best way to do that is to vote."  It also describes the 'I Voted' stickers as "Significant. Powerful. Encouraging."  Perhaps in 2024 the "I Voted" stickers could be more significant and powerful if Native artists were encouraged to design them.

There aren't any baskets portrayed in these drawings, but I felt this was interesting and worthy of putting in the blog. My husband brought these stickers to my attention last week. I wrote this on 10/28/20, but didn't put on this blog until 11/6/20.

A selection of basketry on display at the Alaskan Native Medical Center, Anchorage. Photo 3-2-2019.

Baskets on the Big Screen: The Magnificent Seven

My son took college courses online while sheltering in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was in a film appreciation class, and we turned watching his assignments into a family affair. Sundays were spent in our livingroom with a double-feature matinee, complete with popcorn, of course. The first movie of the day was guided by his assignment:  comedy, western, suspense, etc. We took turns picking the second movie of the day, from classics to computer animation.

This brought about some interesting film pairings, plus an interest in watching other old movies on the TCM channel - Turner Classic Movies.  And...the discovery of baskets on the big screen! 

A fun movie for basket spotting was The Magnificent Seven (United Artists, 1960). Granaries with basketry-style covers and basket-style bird traps hanging on a wall were diverse types of props in various scenes. Baskets behind the counter in the cantina, on a table in a home, and others used in maize (corn) processing were also featured. 

Baskets in a home.

Women using baskets for processing maize.

The Yaqui Deer Dance was part of a fiesta scene, complete with colorful masks and distinctive leg rattles made of moth cocoons. (I recognized the masks and rattles as the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles had a collection of them, and one day at work there, I wrapped the fragile cocoon-studded leggings in acid-free tissue paper for storage.) As the Yaqui people live in the Sonoran Desert on both sides of the border, and the story takes place in a Mexican village near the U.S. border, the use of Yaqui accoutrements seem to be culturally correct for the film props. 

 I was able to find some information about the movie's production in Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven: A Film Score Guide by Mariana Whitmer (2017). Whitmer writes, "The dances at the fiesta, which takes place the day after the Seven arrive in the village, were genuine traditional Mexican folk dances. The Yaqui Indian Deer Dance was. . . just as authentic; utilizing rattles and percussive instruments traditionally required to evoke the sounds of the forest." Whitmer reports the movie was filmed on sets in Tepoztlan and Oacalco, near Cuernavaca in central Mexico. Although filmed far from the border, the dance regalia was in fact correct for the border area. 

Now, what about those baskets?

First, I visited the pages of Mason (see 6/17/2020 blog), and found three Yaqui baskets on Plates 236 and 237, thus described as "made of palm-leaf strips in twilled weaving" (pg 526). 

Mason continues on pg 527: "The Yaqui of Sonora, Mexico, says Palmer, split the stems of arudinaria for basketry by pounding them carefully with stones. The reed divide along the lines of least resistance into splits of varying width, which are assorted and used in different textures." The reference is to Edward Palmer, "Plants Used by the Indians of the United States," American Naturalist, XII, October 1878, p. 653. I found the source online but could not find reference to Arudinaria on pg 653, nor anywhere in the Palmer article.

   Arundinaria gigantea (Ted  Bodner, USDA, https://www.feis-crs.org/feis/)

Donkey carrying what could be cane; men in sombreros; basket on the ground.

Arundinaria is cane; Palmer's quote in Mason was not specific to species. Sometimes Arundinaria is called giant cane, river cane, or bamboo. The Yaqui baskets illustrated in Mason have the look of woven cane. Likewise, so did some of the baskets in The Magnificent Seven. 

Is cane bamboo? A quick Google search found this: "River Cane, An American Bamboo," Guest post by Alex Rajewski on the Plant Scientist blog by Sarah Shailes, posted January 28, 2016. "Although the majority of bamboo species are found in Asia, River cane (Arundinaria gigantea) is the only species of bamboo native to the United States." 

Searching online for Yaqui baskets led to Holden's Studies of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico (1936), wherein tortilla baskets are mentioned three times, and Plate 3, image 7, page 23, has a poor illustration of a basket. The most useful information is on pg 69: "Every kitchen we visited had from one to ten baskets each. There was always a tortilla basket from ten to fourteen inches in diameter and six to eight inches deep. Then there was usually a larger basket in which the eating utensils were kept. This basket, when the utensils were not in use, was kept near the hearth, or hanging on a wire attached to a log in the roof. There might be other baskets, of varying sizes and shapes, for storage purposes."  The Magnificent Seven showed what seem to be plaited cane baskets, maybe some of them could be considered tortilla baskets. 

Another mention of  Yaqui basketry comes from Spicer in Pascua: A Yaqui Village in Arizona (1984): "One man and his son make a living during a part of the year by the manufacture of baskets. The type of basket is a deep, straight-sided kind with a lid, made of willow twigs in wicker weave. It is probably not aboriginal."  As willow basketry is common throughout western North America, and as I was not able to find an example of a willow Yaqui basket online nor in my library, Spicer's note on 'non-aboriginal' basketry is unsubstantiated. For further study, Ugent has a good discussion of Mexican basketry and weaving materials, which include willow in "The Master Basket Weavers of the Toluca Market Region," Economic Botany, 2000:54(3).

Men in the cantina with baskets behind them.

To conclude: The Magnificent Seven was a classic western film. There is a good lesson on tolerance and positive race relations at the beginning, when characters played by Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen make sure that a deceased Native American man is buried in the cemetery. The set was meant to imitate a village near the U.S./Mexican border. The use of Yaqui dance regalia and basketry seems appropriate for this locale. If you watch the movie, see if you can spot the baskets.

I wasn't able to spot any baskets in the 2016 re-make of The Magnificent Seven. In this version, the setting is the town of Rose Creek, a generic town in the Great Plains. Perhaps it is meant to be in Colorado, as portions of it were filmed there; most of the movie was filmed in Louisiana.  Settings differ, as does the leading cast. Director Antoine Fuqua commented, “There were a lot of black cowboys, a lot of Native Americans; Asians working on the railroads. The truth of the West is more modern than the movies have been.”  Again, the story is about good guys saving the day.