New-York tribune., 1901-04-16

ABORIGINAL SYMBOLISM THE SUBJECT OF
LECTURE BY GEORGE WHARTON JAMES
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TT ANN

ABORIGINAL S1 MBOIlSM THE = EJF T OF A
LECTURE BY GEORGE WHARTON JAMES.
''Basketry. the Exponent of Indian Thought
the subject of address by George Wharton
James before the meeting of the New-York City
Indian Association in the Broadway Tabernacle
yesterday. Mr.. James had with him a number of
baskets illustrating the work of the Hops. Tulares.
Sabobas Apaches. Navajos and other tribes. In
these, he said, be not only pretty pieces
of wickerwork. but expressions of the inner life
of the red man. 1t is common, because the native
American soiled garments has a dirty face
and plastered hair. to define his race as unclean.
brutal and savage and wanting in all sense of
beauty in imagination and poetic thought. Afraid
of being laughed has made the Indian secretive,
and it is difficult matter induce him to talk of
his legendary lore and mythology. Me no tell-you
white man, you laugh" is the usual reply to in
quires on the subject. and only after often re-
peated assertions. You talk to and no laugh"
can anything be gained from him.
Mr.. James recalled the expression: THE book has
killed the building" and said that 1t is equally
that civilization has killed the basket. the
Indians most prominent craft and best means of
expression. and that unless the industry be placed
a permanent basis in a few years it will be
lost AS architecture, poems and paintings ex-
press the strivings of civilized life. so. he said.
the baskets tell of the Indians artistic aspirations.
In the baskets before him Mr.. James described the
meaning of many of the designs they had been
explained to him by veterans of their tribes. In
he showed mountains and valleys. which
sometimes repeated to indicate the under
world; birds that in frequent repettions and
had lost heads and tails and become conventional
figures understood only by their makers; diamonds
from markings Of the rattlesnake; the zgzag line
Of the lightning; the scroll copied from the whrl-
ings Of the wind in the sand; the and stars
and worm tracks and trees The figures
basket represented bats. and the maker. old
woman after much entreaty had explained the
thought that she had embodied in them. There
a hole in her roof through which the bats came
and they disturbed her night and threatened.
she said. to suck her breath" She had finally
thought Of proptiating the Great Power behind
all evil and had woven her disturbers into a prayer
basket in which she offered the sacred meal to the
god.
The lecturer showed a large fiat basket made by
Ramona, the widow OF Juan Diego the original of
"Alessandro' in Helen Hunt Jacksons Ramona"
who, he said is still living. This too was prayer
basket, and decorated with a large star sur
rounded by many small ones After long entreaty
Ramona had told him the story of it's making She
could not, after her husbands murder, sleep for
sounds of the approaching enemy. and the shots
that had feled him in his doorway continually
rang In her ears. Finally the thought TO her
that If she was heap good woman she might
some time go 70 him among the stars. and she had
made the basket as propitiatory Offering to her
fort to her, she had sold 1t. she replied excitedy
Basket n heap lie. throw II away / no like
um stay here. get heap tired of waiting. want
to GO