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[[image: shows three people in the process of cleaning wheat ]] 
[[caption: Some of our Indians use their baskets in giving wheat its final cleaning.]]

and others.  In each case the design is a complete unit.  One may find a basket with the squash blossom design in the Gila Crossing district and one in the Blackwater district sixty miles away with the pattern in the two baskets being identical.  The same is true of all Pima designs.  The Pima fret, with its numerous variations, is the most popular design among the weavers, with the squash blossom ranking second.

The oldest type of basket made by the Pimas is the Giho.  This is a peculiar-shaped burden basket and, according to the old legend, it at one time could walk but in doing so was so ungainly that the people laughed at it.  Angered at this, the Giho declared that thereafter it would have to be carried. These baskets have not been made for the past forty or fifty years and are now almost extinct.  I have one that I prize very highly.  When I came to this reservation thirty years ago, it was hanging in the Nuns' parlor in one of our missions.  When I could not find a specimen among the Indians, I asked the mission people to let me purchase it if and when it was ever for sale.  As years passed, I would occasionally see it, but the old Mother Superior was very fond of the Giho and would never part with it.  When she was called to her great reward, a younger group coming in were not so partial to this old basket, and one day the Father called me and said they wanted to give me the old Giho for my collection.  I was pleased, indeed, for I had waited twenty-four years to get it. 

From a financial standpoint, the story of my acquisition of some of my baskets is quite different to that of the Giho. I recall that a certain woman on the reservation had a number of fine old baskets.  Among them was on old olla that I wanted very much but she would never sell it.  Over a period of twelve years, I made numerous attempts to buy it but the answer was always no.  One day her husband came to me and said he thought his wife would sell me the basket if I would offer her twenty-five dollars for it.  That was a lot of money for an Indian basket in those days, but I wanted the basket and told him to convey my offer to his wife.  The next day he brought me the basket and collected the money, and I am still wondering whether or not this was a case of a little family collusion or perhaps a little high-jacking on the part of the husband.  I had this happen one time.  A man purloined one of his wife's baskets and sold it to me and immediately invested the proceeds in bootleg liquor  When he sobered up, he confessed his guilt and the wife promptly made me give the basket back to her.  In the case of the old olla, the purchase was made nearly twenty years ago and nothing has happened so I am beginning to feel fairly safe. 

I have lived with the Pimas for thirty years and during that time have collected more than two hundred specimens of their basketry, and I have very few duplicates in my collection.  Nevertheless, I continue to occasionally find patterns that I do not have.

It is remarkable that so many of these decorative patterns have been handed down through the many generations and yet there has never been a sketch or drawing made of them.  The weavers tell me they learn the patterns from their

[[image: two baskets]] 
[[caption: Olla baskets of the Pimas]]