Photograph by Fiske.
INDIAN BEAD WORK.
Mrs. George Fiske's collection of Yosemite and Pai-ute´ bead work.
Many of the young women are now giving their attention to making fancy bead work, in the form of ornamental belts and hat-bands, but this is an industry of very modern origin. Some of them are employed by white people to do laundry and other work, and any labor of this kind pays them better than making baskets for sale. Forty years ago a finely made basket could have been bought for less than ten dollars. At present, if the time spent in getting and preparing the necessary materials, and in working them into the basket, were paid for at the same rate per day that a young woman receives for doing washing in the hotel laundry, or for private families, it would amount to over one hundred dollars.
Most of the baskets made for domestic use are so closely woven that they are practically water-tight, and are used for cooking and similar purposes. Over on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near the dry, desert country, the Indians make some of their baskets in the form of jugs of various sizes. These are smeared over with a pitch composition, which renders them perfectly water-tight, and they are used for carrying water when traveling over those desolate, sandy wastes.
BOWS AND ARROWS.
The Indian men showed no less ingenuity artistic skill in their special lines of work than the women, especially in manufacture of their bows and arrows, in the making of fish lines and coarser twine out of the soft, flexible bark of the milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), and in making other useful implements and utensils with the very limited means at their disposal.
Their bows were made of a branch of the incense cedar (Libocedrus decurrens), or of the California nutmeg (Tumion Californicum [Torreya]), made flat on the outer side, and rounded smooth on the inner or concave side when the bow is strung for use. The flat, outer side was covered with sinew, usually that from the leg of a deer, steeped in hot water until it became soft and glutinous, and then laid evenly and smoothly over the wood, and so shaped at the ends as to hold the string in place. When thoroughly dry the sinew contracted, so that the bow when not strung was concave on the outer side.
Photograph by Boysen.
A BASKET MAKER.
She is weaving a burden basket. The one to the left is for cooking, and a baby basket stands against the tent.