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Performing Archive

List of Large Plates Supplementing Volume Thirteen

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The basketry of the Karok does not differ from that of the Hupa and the Yurok. The process is always twining, and the usual materials are hazel rod for the warp, roots of the digger or the yellow pine for the weft, and Xerophyllum grass for white overlay, bark of the maidenhair fern for black, and fibres from the stem of Woodwardia fern, dyed in alder-bark juice in the mouth of the workwoman, for red. Represented in the plate are the receptacle for the storage of seeds and nuts, the burden-basket, the winnowing tray, various sizes of mush-baskets and food containers, and the cradle-basket.
The Jumping dance was an annual ceremony for averting pestilence. The head-dress worn by the dancers was a wide band of deerskin with rows of red woodpecker crests and a narrow edging of white deer-hair sewn on it. A deerskin robe was worn as a kilt, and each performer displayed all the shells and beads he possessed or could borrow. In the right hand was carried a straw-stuffed cylinder with a slit-like opening from end to end, an object the significance of which is unknown to the modern Hupa.
The Yurok canoe is simply a hollowed section of a redwood log. The aboriginal implements for canoe-making were a stone hammer and an elk-horn chisel for cutting the log and removing a number of slabs in order to reduce it to the desired thickness, and an elk-horn adz for finishing the surface. The actual hollowing was accomplished by means of fire. The craft shown in the plate is hardly an average example as to the workmanship, but at best Yurok canoes are rather crude.
Each summer a substantial structure of this kind is thrown across the river, the southern and the northern divisions of the tribe alternating. The weir remains in place until the spring freshets carry it away. A fisherman stands on each of several platforms erected below an equal number of openings in the weir, and lowers and draws his dip-net at random. As the construction of a weir is a communal undertaking, the catch is divided each evening according to the requirements of the various families.
Wokas, the seeds of the water-lily, Nymphaea polysepala, is harvested in the latter part of August and throughout September. The nearly ripe pods are plucked and deposited in the canoe, but the mature ones, having burst open, are too sticky to be plucked, and are scooped up in a tule ladle and placed in a basket. After the pods have fermented, the seeds are separated from the mass by stirring in water. They are then dried, parched, hulled, dried again, and stored in bags. Wokas was formerly a staple food, and is still much used as a luxury.
Crater lake, a body of water indescribably blue, occupies an extinct crater in the heart of the Cascade mountains of southern Oregon. It is on the boundary of what was formerly the territory of the Klamath Indians, who held it to be especially potent in conferring shamanistic power upon men who there fasted and bathed. An important Klamath myth seeks to account for the former absence of fish from Crater lake, a condition that was altered in 1888 by the introduction of trout.
The Achomawi, or Pit River Indians, produce baskets only by the process known as twining, which is true weaving, never by coiling, which is actually a sewing process. In general their baskets have bottoms and sides slightly rounded, openings broad, and depth rather shallow. The usual materials are willow rods for the warp, or upright elements, and pie-root strands for the weft, or horizontal elements. The structure in the background is a summer hut, a rudely conical or hemispherical tipi covered with tule mats. The workwoman is wearing a rabbit-skin robe.