Basket-making has recently become a fad with white women, but the dusky woman need not fear the rivalry of her white sister. Civilization has too many claims upon her, and she has too little time and strength to devote to the work to permit of her spending weeks in searching mountain, valley, and plain for the material, and toiling months in the weaving, of a single basket. Even were she to do this, she could not weave into it the traditions of a race, the faith of a religion, the longings of a soul, and the poetry of a people. Until this is possible, the Indian basket will stand without a peer and its maker without a rival.
MOJAVE BASKET-MAKER
From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.
[CHAPTER VIII]
SHIPS OF THE DESERT
An account of the desert which omitted to make mention of the burro would be woefully incomplete. The burro has been one of the most important factors in desert exploration and development. He is far more sagacious and enduring than the horse or mule. He is to the American desert what the camel is to the deserts of the Eastern hemisphere.
Few persons are aware that camels were once used upon the American deserts, but such are the facts. Ten years after the Pathfinder, General John C. Fremont, crossed the desert and traversed the Golden State, and four years after Marshall had thrilled the world with his discovery of gold in Northern California, Jefferson Davis, Secretary of State under President Pierce, consigned to Mr. L. P. Redwine, of Los Angeles, a lot of camels, to be used in transporting supplies to Government posts located in the arid regions. The camels were delivered to Mr. Redwine, at Los Angeles, in 1853, and one of his first assignments was the transporting of a lot of supplies to the troops stationed at Fort Mojave at the eastern confines of the Great Mojave Desert.