The Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection.

The Yokuts are some forty to sixty linguistically related tribal groups that historically lived in the San Joaquin valley and adjacent Sierra Nevada foothills of California. They made a variety of coiled basketry forms, including jars with distinct flat shoulders and short, vertical necks. Figurative and representational motifs woven in red and black were common, as were the quail topknots that adorned many Yokuts baskets. The interlocking diamond pattern on the shoulder of this basket is meant to represent a rattlesnake.

Museum Expedition 1908, Museum Collection Fund

Museum Expedition 1908, Museum Collection Fund

Museum Expedition 1908, Museum Collection Fund

Museum Expedition 1908, Museum Collection Fund

This large, globular basket was purchased from the proprietor of the hotel in Ukiah. According to Dr. Hudson, informant to Stewart Culin, the Museum's curator, it is called a "chi-mo", literally, "Son-in-law). This was given to a man by his mother-in-law or the nearest relative of the bride. After the gift of this basket they may not speak to or even look at each other again. Twined "dowry" baskets are among the largest of all Pomo baskets. The technique here is called lattice twining in which two flexible weft strands twist around an additional, rigid element as well as vertical warp strands. This considerably strengthens the basket. Most baskets with horizontal band designs have an intentional change to the pattern, called a dau. While exact significance is obscure it has been regarded as the doorway for the spirits to enter, inspect, and then leave the basket when it would be destroyed.

This Doctor's headdress was probably made by Dr. Hudson using gull feathers his wife gathered with special permission from the game warden. The Big-Head headdress or Kuksu shna, a ceremony involving the impersonation of a god. The feathers are attached to a twined redbud or dogwood framework, and a projecting snout, representing the long nose of the Kuksu spirit, is composed of short feathers attached to a stick. There has been some confusion as to if this is made correctly or it may have been rendered slightly differently by Hudson after a particular Pomo group.

08.491.8983 basket is on the right. (See also 08.491.8679 description.) The cooking basket (bush-ka) has the design of the mountain-quail top-knot. This design was Wilson's best known design. The mountain-quail has a very long, straight top knot. Author Sally Bates suggests that this design may have been favored as the weaver's name, Oymutnee, meant "the sound made by a quail." Baskets such as this one seem to be characteristic of the Maidu community of Mikchopedo at Chico, CA.

Wickerwork basket, roughly rectangular in shape, of natural coloured red bud and willow plaited in alternating horizontal bands. The lower third (approx.) is plaited in double strands. The top and bottom edges are of wrapped strands.