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This Pima storage basket is used to store wheat.
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Examples of the Pima fret design.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB PEEBLES

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Basket weavers use most simple tools.
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BASKET MAKERS of Arizona

BY BERT ROBINSON

The weaving of baskets is the oldest of the textile arts known to mankind.

In his most primitive state man was a roving hunter, living and fighting for survival with other wild beasts. But, in time, he slowly emerged from his savage state and approached a culture or what is today called civilization. One of his first steps in this direction was the establishment of a fixed place of abode for himself and family. This created his first transportation problem.

As his diet consisted of the flesh of other animals and of wild fruit, nuts, berries, and the seeds of some plants, he found the need for a container for these wild foods to transport them to his home. He fashioned together leaves and twigs from the trees and the reeds from the marshes and along the river banks into what we today call baskets. This was an important step in his advancement. The earliest period of development of the primitive people in America is called "The Basket Maker Period."

Our American Indians, who are the successors to these early cave people, have not only carried on their craft of basket weaving, but have developed it to a degree unsurpassed by any other race of people. An interesting factor in the development of this craft is the wide range of material used. An Indian weaver seldom import material for her basket. Instead she accommodates her craft to the materials that are at hand. This accounts for the baskets made by the Indians at Point Barrow, on the northernmost tip of America, being made from whalebone taken from the mouth of the black whale of the Bering Sea. Farther down the west coast, the Thlingits and the Makaws dig spruce roots for their baskets. In Minnesota, the Chippewas fashion baskets from the bark of young birch trees and decorate them with dyed porcupine quills. In the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, the Cherokee Indians make a very durable basket from split cane, as do the Chitemachas of Mississippi. In the Everglades of Florida, the Seminoles make baskets of wire grass and palmetto leaves. Many other tribes might be mentioned, but in almost every tribe the material, the techniques or decorative designs are different. Seldom do we find the crafts of any two tribes alike. 

In Arizona, there are fourteen tribes that make up the greater part of our Indian population of the state. Eight of these are basket-weaving tribes which we might divide into three groups. In the south, we have the two desert tribes, the Papagos and the Pimas. Through the central and eastern part of the state, we have the Yavapai and Apaches, who are mountain people, and a third group includes the four

PAGE THIRTY • ARIZONA HIGHWAYS • AUGUST 1951