Identifier: cu31924097644961 (find matches)
Title: Pomo Indian baskets and their makers
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Purdy, Carl, 1861-
Subjects: Indian baskets Pomo Indians
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif. : Out West Co. Press
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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PoMO * Shi-bus. (Plate 4\ of construction as to make description unnecessary. In sucha house three generations of a family lived and stored theirfood. The center was occupied by open fires, the smoke find-ing vent through a hole in the ropf. Great storage basketsfilled with acorns were stacked on the sides, fish hung onstrings on the walls, and the whole family life went on within.The summer house was also of wicker work covered with boughs,and the tribe often moved several times a year, as acorns, fishor game, or dry quarters were the desiderata. Their women carried great loads in the conical baskets, sus-pended in a net which had a broad band which passed acrossthe forehead. When the woman bent forward the weightrested on the back and was steadied by the head. A greatvariety of seeds, bulbs and roots were used for food. Thesoap root Chlorogalum, was used for laundry purposes, andalso was beaten into a pulp and placed in streams and pools to
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POMO INDIAN BASKETS. 15 stupefy the fish. The great food staple of the Pomo tribes-was the acorn ; this, the great number of oaks of various sOrts,which are such a scenic feature in the region they inhabit,furnished in abundance. Each winter village contained thesweat-house, an institution inseparable from their social andreligious life. It was a circular excavation roofed with timbers-to form a cone and covered with soil. The largest werethirty or forty feet across. In it their dances and other assem-blages were held. The building portrayed on page 445 is a mod-ernized adaptation of the plan. Few of the old-style sweat-houses are now to be found. Their dances were of a medical or religious character, andthe costumes and chants varied according to the occasion. Iwell remember a great dance which occurred in 1873. At therancheria five miles south of Ukiah an immense sweat-housewas built, and the Indians gathered there from far and near.For weeks dances took place day and night; the big

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