Native American Basketry

The Native American collection at the Oregon Historical Society illustrates an ongoing adaptation of older arts and techniques to new circumstances and materials. Artists are always experimenting, pushing the envelope of imagination and creativity to use new techniques, new materials, new ways of looking at traditional methods. They take pride in learning old ways; they honor their ancestry by carrying on tradition; and they feel the euphoria of creating things that are altogether original.

Today, Native arts are thriving because of encouragement from tribal leaders, support from various art programs, and enthusiasm and pride from Native American artists themselves. A new generation is learning from their elders the values and traditions meaningful to their ancestors. The revival of Native American arts helps to ensure their survival.

The objects selected for exhibition illustrate the broad range of Native peoples' artistry, both ancient and contemporary, and are grouped around several Native basket motifs: flat twined bags, parfleches, beaded bags, coiled baskets, and round twined bags.

Twining — wrapping and twisting two weft strands around a warp strand — is a technique Native Americans of the Plateau (the dry lands between Central Oregon and southern Canada, stretching westward into Montana) used for 9,000 years to make utilitarian and beautiful objects. Twined flat bags became woven works of art reflecting the imagination of their makers. Native artists enhanced the beauty of twined creations with "false embroidery," by wrapping decorative colored strands around the weft that appears on the pieces' outer surface.

The Nez Perce, Yakama, Walla Walla, and Umatilla tribes all made flat bags. Fashioned in many different sizes, they were tote bags used to store foodstuffs, clothing, and personal possessions. Designs prior to Indian contact with Euro-Americans in the 1700s were primarily geometric. Post-contact designs include figures, animals, and flowers.

The bags on exhibit show the influence of Euro-American contact. Too small to store foods, they function as purses. Instead of drawstring closures, they have buckskin handles. The false embroidery is often done with commercial yarns or other Euro-American introduced materials. In color and composition, many of the bags' designs reflect non-Indian influences.

Twining as a technique survives, although few flat bags are currently made.

Popularly known as "Indian suitcases," parfleches are flat, rectangular, folded envelopes made from rawhide that has been stretched and left to dry in the sun. Usually made in pairs, parfleches were hung or tied like saddlebags on the backs of horses. Together with other bags and baskets, they served to transport food, household goods, and personal possessions.

Trade with Euro-Americans began in the early 1800's bringing with it a wealth of new materials. Red, green, and blue wool cloth and Venetian glass beads, as well as seed beads in a multitude of colors, joined the traditional store of embellishment materials, including animal teeth and claws, porcupine quills, natural dyes and paints, hair, shells, feathers, and buckskin. With this development, only time and imagination limited beaded bag design.

Beaded bags are made to commemorate events, to present as gifts, and to be carried on ceremonial and festive occasions. Post-contact bags are also made for commercial trade. A typical beaded bag is made of hide in a rectangular or square shape. The artist beads the hide solidly on one side only, using the "overlay" technique requiring two needles: one to string the beads on, the other to tack each bead down. When the beadwork is complete, the artist adds a hide or fabric back, a fabric lining for larger bags, and thong handles.

Coiling is another technique Plateau Indian groups used for making baskets. The artist constructs coiled baskets by stitching a flexible element around a core material. Each row is stitched into the previous one, forming a continuous spiral. These baskets, unique to the Pacific Northwest, are decorated by imbrication — a technique that calls for a third flat material that is folded and placed parallel to the core material and held in place by the next stitch. The flat piece is then folded again to conceal the stitch.

The Klikitat, Yakama, and Nez Perce created the most familiar type of coiled baskets with imbrication. These are circular baskets that flare toward the rim. Often they have "ears," or rim loops laced with string to hold leaves and ferns in place as a covering for dried berries. The baskets themselves were frequently hung from a tumpline around a person's forehead or chest to leave the person's hands free for picking berries. Designs are most often zigzag geometrics, although figures and animals also commonly appear.

Round twined bags are made by the same techniques as flat bags: twining and false embroidery. In addition, overlay twining (in which decorative weft strands of color are brought to the surface of the piece as demanded by the design) is used to weave more complicated designs. Traditionally, round bags were attached by buckskin loops to a woman's waistband to hold roots as they were dug from the ground. In this they differed from the flat bags used to store the roots. The rawhide rims and loops are clues as to which of these bags were used for their traditional purpose and which are modern versions.