Basket
date: label: Accession Date
content: 21 Dec 1883
label: Collection Date
content: July 1883
name: label: Collector
content: James G. Swan
label: Donor Name
content: James G. Swan
notes: label: Notes
content: Originally cataloged as "Nest Of 4 Baskets" but only one basket with this number remains in the collections. From card: "1 [basket exchanged] Trocadero [Museum, France] July 1885. 1 [basket exchanged] Salem, May [18]86. One basket Illus.: Hndbk. N. Amer. Ind., Vol. 7, Northwest Coast, Fig. 11 right, pg. 249." Handbook caption describes this object as a "Plain close-twined basket with grown-dyed bands on the natural buff background, a characteristic Haida basketry decoration. height 41 cm."
label: Notes
content: One basket is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on basket lent to Anchorage Museum http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=183, retrieved 5-19-2012: Basket, Haida. Raspberries, salmonberries, currants, blueberries, huckleberries, and salalberries ripen during summer in southeast Alaska and Haida Gwaii. Haida artist Delores Churchill identified this large spruce-root basket as a collection vessel into which berry pickers emptied their loads. The dark bands are a traditional Haida design, woven from roots dyed with hemlock and iron soaked in urine. Extracts from Elders' discussions of the basket in 2005 (see web page cited above for the full entries): Delores Churchill: This one is definitely Haida. If you could see that they started here [vertical line on outside], and as I said they go counterclockwise, so it would be going around in that direction. Some of these baskets when— Suzie Jones: You moved clockwise though when you did that though so- Delores Churchill: That's because we hold it upside down. Clarence Jackson: Oh, start it from the bottom. Delores Churchill: Right. And we're going counterclockwise. . . . I'm going to turn it on its side, because I want to look at the bottom. There was one woman and her descendants still do that, Charles Edenshaw's wife's family. And you could see all the way that they added every five or six rows, and that way they went from finer to coarser, and they didn't have to keep adding. Her family did it that way, so it kind of signifies some of those families, because they did it in that way. Delores Churchill: And these baskets, when I was a child, we used this sized baskets. And we had small ones that we picked [berries] with. Everybody picked with the smaller ones [about a six inch diameter]. . . . You didnt carry this, but there was a small one you carried on your back. And you had a smaller one [in hands] and then you took from the front one to put in the back [over the shoulder]. And when I was a child . . . when we collected berries, we put the skunk cabbage leaves on the bottom, because it acted like wax paper and that way it caught the juice too. We didn't want the juice to drip down our back, but we also saved the juice to use when putting the berries away. But I noticed some of the children in the Haskell Institute-some of the Haida children that went from Hydaburg and Kassan to some of these schools-they had these as their suitcases. You could see the children arriving, and there's a picture of them and their baskets are lined up in the back where they kept it. When I was a child they were still using these kinds of baskets. . . . Delores Churchill: Another thing that we did, we did go harvest spruce roots with our Elders. And it was really interesting because we would go to Toe Hill to harvest razor clams commercially, then we would walk to the area where we would harvest the spruce roots. But when we harvested, the elders they didn't allow us to do it. Just the elders gathered the spruce roots. But when they were ready to quit-it was really interesting-they sang a song. They were all scattered around, and the first one that started the song would go down and start the fire for the spruce root-the cooking of the spruce root, because they would put it in the fire. Then the next group would sing, and they would be the ones that would help get the kindling, the beach wood. And it would go clear around. And when it reached the last ones, then they all went down the beach then and started the cooking. And we did it the same way as the Tlingit. We put it [cooked root] through a stick that was forked and took the outer skin off right at that time. The Haidas really worked on it right away. But Tlingits stored it when they got that far. When they cooked it, they would bundle it up and put it away. But the Haidas didn't do that. They'd immediately start splitting and continue to split it until it was down to where it was workable. And I don't know if the Tlingits did it earlier, but from what Jennie told me, they never worked on it. We gave her some that we had harvested, and she just put it away, so I think that was a common Tlingit [practice] because they had so many things happening right at that time. "Delores Churchill: This is quite typical of the Haida weaving where you have the black bands. And I don't know if they have any meaning or not, except that in Klukwan-what they told me, when they were feasting with the Mother Basket-low caste people would get the bottom just up to there [first horizontal line from bottom]. High class people as you go higher, then the chiefs got the ones that were full. So I don't know if that's why the lines were on there, because they didn't know in the village anymore. But when we were looking at the Mother Basket, and I saw the lines on the Mother Basket, I asked Mrs. Willard. I said, "Why do you have the lines on the Mother basket?" And she said that was the reason that different caste people got different amounts of goods from when they were having a feast.
label: Notes
content: Delores Churchill: But this is beautifully made. I know that we all admire real fine baskets, but this is so even, the weaving, the roots. Everything is so even. Every time we see baskets in a museum, I'm always pushed back to kindergarten, because these are so even and so nice. And you'll notice that the inside is the shiny part, because that's the water resistant part. And now when you see people weaving, that part will be on the bottom, because they're not made for use. And one of the things that people don't understand is that they all thought we wove really tight. But I watched Ida Kadashaan. When she's weaving, she takes her bear tooth, her grizzly bear tooth, rub, rub, rub. And that rubbing spreads the fibers. So you can weave it as tight as you can, but the rubbing also spreads the fibers so it's water resistant. Suzi Jones: What's used to make the color? Delores Churchill: That's iron oxide, and that's why it's fading already. It fades pretty fast. They would use hemlock and iron oxide on the black. But this kind of a basket was used in Klukwan too, because there are many in many different collections that I've seen that look just like this. That's why I had to turn it around again to look at the beginning when she mentioned that, because I have seen some at the Field Museum that I thought were Haida. But the Klukwan people used them with the lines on them too, and same top and so you have to really watch these baskets. Because if they're red, I always look, because most of the time the Klukwan liked to use the red. And I don't know if they had easier access to red and we didn't for the early ones." [From discussion with Delores Churchill (Haida), Peter Jack, Sr. (Tlingit), Clarence Jackson, Sr. (Tlingit), Anna Katzeek (Tlingit), George Ramos (Tlingit), and Donald Gregory (Tlingit) and Rosita Worl (Tlingit) of the Sealaska Heritage Institute at the National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian, 4/18/2005-4/22/2005. Also participating: Aron Crowell and Bill Fitzhugh (NMNH) and Suzi Jones (AMHA).]
label: Notes
content: In 2023, Paz Nunez-Regueiro, Head of the Americas collection at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac confirmed that basket sent to the Trocadero is still there at the Branly, now as catalog number 71.1885.78.321.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 16 Oct 2024
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Masset, Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) / Graham Island, British Columbia, Canada, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Haida
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 013804
label: USNM Number
content: E88965-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Basket
physicalDescription: label: Height - Object
content: 39 cm