Exhibit Label

Finely woven basketry hats elaborately figured with whales, canoes, thunderbirds, and intricate geometric patterns were being made by the Westcoast people when Europeans first arrived on the coast. But these hats are quite different in technique and materials from the late nineteenth- and twentieth- century Makah and Westcoast basketry. White settlers' interest in baskets may very well have been a motivating force in the development of decorated wrapped-twined baskets by the Makah. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)