Implements
The only implements used in the manufacture of the common baskets are awls and knives. The awl was formerly of bone or mesquite wood. Now it is of steel with a wooden or gum handle (fig. 22, a, b). Common case knives or light butcher knives, well sharpened, are used to trim the strips of willow at the time of use.
Method
The ordinary baskets are made by the process known as coiling. The center is of devil's claw, which is generally started as a coil, but is sometimes made by the process called checker weaving for a few centimeters before beginning the coil. The half stalks of the cat-tail are again split before being used and about a dozen of these splints are taken to form a foundation. The other two materials, willow and devil's-claw splints, are kept in water at the time of use to render them flexible. One end of each splint is held in the teeth while the knife is rapidly scraped along the rough side and while the edges are trimmed smooth and made parallel. Upon this part of the operation depends much of the evenness and fineness of the finished basket. The details of the work do not differ from those of coiled basketry everywhere, which have been so fully and entertainingly described by Professor Mason. The margin was left with the splint wrapped smoothly around it until a few years ago when "some man," supposed to have been a Papago, "told them to braid it;" the tops of baskets are therefore usually finished by passing a single devil's-claw splint in and out and backward and forward over the margin, to which it gives a braided appearance. When the weaving is completed the ends of the splints project on the exterior surface, making it very rough. It is also soiled and stained from having been lying about during the intervals when it was not in the maker's hands for the weeks or months that have elapsed since it was begun. By means of a knife the longer and tougher ends are cut away, while the others are broken and the stains are removed by thoroughly rubbing the surface with leaves and twigs of the saltbushes, Atriplex lentiformis, A. canescens, A, polycarpa, etc.
Basket Bowls
This term may be accepted in lieu of a better one, for the tray- or bowl-shaped baskets, which are shallow and have their sides sloping at a low angle from the horizontal. They range from a perfectly flat disk to a bowl with rounded bottom having a depth of 20 cm.
The designs upon these old-style baskets are often very pleasing and even remarkably good. When questioned as to the meaning of the elements of these patterns, the basket makers invariably replied: "I don't know; the old women make them in this way. They copied
