(Wintun) sucker tail
(Yana) long worms in rotten wood.
(Yana) wolf’s eye
Basket styles varied little among the several tribes of the Lassen region. Bottle shapes were never made until after the coming of white man. Cooking baskets were bowl-shaped with high, convexly curved sides, sometimes nearly globular in form. Baskets from which food was eaten individually and general utility baskets were similarly shaped but smaller. Boiling baskets were sometimes without decoration; their dimensions of height and width were about equal. Storage baskets also had about the same shape, curving less, sometimes, but were large, being three feet or more in size. Some were of open work, but usually they were of close or tight weaving.
Flattish bowls or somewhat curved trays were used for food platters as well as for winnowing, parching, and cleaning foods by chafing. Some were of open weave made of willow or hazel (?) only while others were closely woven.
Basketry acorn grinding hoppers also called milling baskets or pounding baskets, were usually regular twined baskets of suitable size and shape: wide mouthed bowl or funnel-shaped. Having no central point from which to start the warp, because of the open bottoms, hopper baskets were started by twining three pine root wefts about the bases of many willow warps to make a circle about five inches in diameter. Additional warps were built up on the radiating ribs, proceeding then in the normal manner of twining. Twined hopper baskets were usually reinforced by lashing one or two strong rings of willow or serviceberry withes. They might also be bound with buckskin along the bottom edges for improved strength and durability as well as to decrease loss of acorn meal during the pounding process. In recent years both mountain Maidu and Atsugewi, also used coiling technique in making hopper baskets, for which purpose it is well suited.
A recent innovation among Atsugewi has been the covering of bottles with basketry and also the weaving of oblong shaped closely twined and coiled baskets, as well as goblet shaped creations.
According to Garth, the seed beater “... was a paddle-shaped implement from one and a half to two feet long with a willow warp and open work twining, also of willow (spaced at three quarters of an inch between rows) across the blade. The handle was wrapped either with willow strips or with buckskin.”
Another important use of basketry was in the construction of cradle boards, or more properly, basket cradles. These are generally known to present day Americans by the incorrect term papoose baskets. The cradle basket is discussed under the heading “Birth and Babies”.
