Indians Basket Weaving: a Priceless Art

RUFINA MORRIS, A 69-YEAR-OLD TOHONO O'ODHAM INDIAN, sat on a couch near her heavy wood stove in her home on the San Xavier Indian Reservation. She was looking at a book cover that showed her surrounded by several of her finest baskets. "When I see those baskets I want to cry," she said in the clipped dialect common among older Tohono O'odham. (The tribe was once called the Papago.) "I could not do that anymore."

Rufina used to spend months weaving desert plants into museum-quality baskets, but arthritis and an injured hand forced her to stop. Then one day in 1971, the tribal council asked her to make a gift for Pope Paul VI.

The tribe's lawyer, Edward Berger of Tucson, was going to Rome during a European vacation, and tribal leaders thought it would be a good idea for him to take a special gift for the Pope from people native to the Sonoran Desert. Rufina created a basket using the techniques of her ancestors for hundreds of years. She carefully wove strands of yucca over bunches of bear grass to give the vessel its shape; but along the way she interrupted the pale yucca with strips of black devil's claw until, finally, she had formed an attractive turtle at the center

BASKET WEAVING THE TOHONO O'ODHAM UNRAVEL AN ART FORM

TEXT BY SAM NEGRI PHOTOGRAPHS BY JERRY JACKA

of the basket as smooth and round as the autumn moon.

"The tribe asked me how much I would charge for the basket, and I said, nothing," Rufina recalled. "I just wanted the Pope's blessing for the injury to my hand. I don't know where the basket ended up, but I knew he would send his blessing."

Berger remembered, "The Pope was thrilled by it. It was probably the first Indian basket he ever received, and he just loved it."

Rufina's story reflects a basic truth concerning the contemporary state of basket weaving by Southwestern Indians: many of the best artisans have grown old and infirm, and the number of weavers has declined.

In a way, the fate of the basket weavers is like the legend of the Man in the Maze, one of the popular designs used by desert-dwelling Indians.

In the traditional design, the dwarf hero l'itoi, also called Elder Brother or l'itoi the Creator, stands at the top of a maze repre-senting the complex twists and turns of life. In one version of the myth, it is said that when l'itoi reaches the center of the maze, his life is over. But in some varia-tions of the woven design, there is a small alcove just before the center where l'itoi, or anyone, can pause, reflect, purify his thoughts, and then continue on, peacefully accepting that the journey has been taken as far as it can go. The art of the indian basket weaver today appears to be in that little alcove. From their origin as strictly utilitarian im-plements, the baskets have evolved to be works of art, reflecting patience, skill, and an appreciation for symmetrical design. But fewer Indians are making baskets, and an-thropologists say there is no doubt that the art is gradually dying. One day soon the basket weaver, like l'itoi, may step into the center of the maze and vanish.

But maybe not. As long ago as 1894, Washington Matthews, an Army surgeon and expert on Navajo religion, predicted that basket weaving would quickly become extinct in the Southwest. In fact, the prac-tice has vanished in some tribes and severe-ly declined in others. Indians in the Southwest have been weaving baskets for approximately 2,000 years. Anthropologists, aware of artifacts found during excavations at Ventana Cave on the Papago Indian Reservation, say there is essentially no difference in the weaving techniques that are used today, though some of the materials and de-signs have changed.

The reality of the last 30 years is that an evolutionary process similar to natural selection has occurred: by and large, only the finer artisans survive today.

Annie Antone, a Tohono O'odham who lives in Gila Bend and regularly travels to her family's home in the reservation village of Charco 27, weaves baskets with such detailed designs and tight stitches that in 1992 the Smithsonian Institution brought her to Washington to demonstrate her techniques while weaving a basket for the museum's permanent collection.

Often she adopts patterns found on ancient Hohokam pottery, maps the design out on graph paper (a practice unheard of among most Tohono O'odham weavers), and then reproduces the image using strands of the black devil's claw and the red root of the banana yucca between strands of sun-bleached white yucca. Using this technique, she produced a basket about 18 inches high with the symbol of a flute player repeated as a band around the upper and lower portions of the periphery. She decided to weave musical notes between the flute players - but not just any musical notes.

While visiting a friend, she thumbed through his daughter's piano book. She found an exercise called "Indian Song" and stitched it, note by note, into the basket.

That basket went to a collector in exchange for $4,000, which any basket weaver will tell you is a very long way from the humble beginnings of the basket-weaver's trade.

Native peoples of the Southwest started creating baskets long before they made pottery. In the old days, the women wove their baskets for strictly utilitarian purposes. As buckets, pots, and pans came into more common use, baskets were relegated to decorative and commercial uses. For the most part, today's basket weavers are work-ing for a non-Indian market that admires skilled craftsmanship and sees the work as a palpable link to ancient cultures.

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 34 AND 35) Miniature Tohono O'odham baskets, varying in size from 3/4 inch in diameter to 6 1/4 inches, were woven by Leona Antone, Karen Antone, Sinclair Francisco, Dorina Garcia, Linda Hendricks, Charlene Juan, Debbie Juan, Elizabeth Juan, Phillip Juan, Adeline Manuel, and Ruby Thomas.

ALL BASKETS COURTESY C&R TRADERS, CASA GRANDE In the Southwest, the baskets are particularly engaging because of their link to an arid landscape where the organic materials used in the process are scarce and difficult to manipulate. Both Pimas and Tohono O'odham used to weave baskets from thick bundles of wheat-straw sewn in place with strips of bark from the mesquite tree. The Tohono O'odham also used the thin branches of the desert willow, a practice now very rare. Today most baskets are made with yucca leaves and bear grass; and the tough, hard-to-find strands of devil's claw are used for contrast. The more devil's claw there is in a basket, the more expensive it will be. Some weavers also make intricate miniature baskets from horsehair. Before a weaver of traditional baskets can weave a single strand, she must harvest, split, and dry the materials, a tedious and time-consuming process. A good basket can easily take four months or longer to weave. Today the number of Indian weavers who can produce baskets with sides as smooth as glass has diminished greatly, and the price of baskets has skyrocketed. Still there appears no shortage of demand, both from museums and private collectors who appreciate an indigenous craft that has reached a refined state, and may be doomed.