Under One Sky Basketry Gallery

LOUISA KEYSER

Datsolalee

“Datsolalee” is an approximate phonetic English spelling. The Washoe language is unique, using many sounds not present in English and capitalization of proper names is not a convention; certain capital letters instead signify specific sounds important to word
meaning.

“QUEEN” OF THE BASKETMAKERS

She sits upright in a Carson City photographer’s studio surrounded by her earliest coiled willow baskets woven for sale. Her right hand grips an impressive walking stick; her left hand holds a mush-stirring stick. Although her clothing does not reflect a person of status, her poise, posture, and expression suggest royalty. It is no wonder this promotional picture (photo mural, left), commissioned by Amy Cohn, is titled Queen of the Basketmakers

Who was Datsolalee? While there is much knowledge of her work as a critically acclaimed Washoe basket weaver, we know very little about her life beyond the carefully curated myths of Amy and Abe Cohn, who promoted and sold her works from their Carson City Emporium art and curio store in the early 1900s. We do know that the name Datsolalee (meaning roughly “she has hips” in Washoe) was likely not her birth name but was given to her by Washoe women she worked with during her time as a laundress at Lake Tahoe. Her English name was Louisa Keyser, which she preferred. She was born around 1850 in traditional Washoe territory, but exactly where is unknown. Louisa had no living children of her own, but married Charlie Keyser, who had children from his previous marriages; she also cared for her brother’s young son Hugh after the death of her sister-in-law and fellow acclaimed weaver, Scees Bryant (ca. 1858-1918).

Abe and Amy Cohn initially hired Louisa as a domestic worker, and she likely used her spare time to weave baskets and basketry-covered flasks for the curio trade. She was inspired by the fine basketry from California sold at the Emporium to experiment with the shape and designs of her own basketry. Amy recognized her talent and, around 1897, the Cohns contracted with Louisa and Charlie to house and support them in exchange for ownership of all the baskets Louisa made. To further expand their clientele, Amy persuaded Louisa to display her weaving skills at their Bicose (after the Washoe word for cradle basket) branch store in Tahoe City, the California State Fair in Sacramento, the Nevada State Fair in Reno, and the 1919 St. Louis Exposition of Industrial Arts and Crafts.

Over the course of her career, Louisa’s baskets were sought by collectors and scholars, ensuring that her art remains as a testament to this remarkable woman. Louisa died in 1925 and was buried in the Stewart Indian School Cemetery with an unfinished basket. Her work remains the most highly sought of all the basketry artists of the circa 1895-1935 florescence of Washoe basket weaving.

Louisa’s Tiny Basket

Collecting miniature objects was a popular Victorian hobby, and Louisa Keyser wove miniature baskets for sale. This “micro-miniature” is only 3/8˝ in diameter (1 cm). Redbud forms the background fiber, and willow serves as the decorative element. It was given to Mrs. Gesine Stevens by Louisa Keyser in 1923. Mrs. Stevens mailed this tiny basket from New York when she donated it to the Museum in 1959.

White Faces

By the early 19th century, the Washoe people began to see strangers in their lands. Oral tradition recounts Spaniards or Mexicans wearing “funny clothing” in Washoe territory. John C. Frémont documented his 1844 interaction with the Washoe people: “Our friendly demeanor reconciled them, and, when we got near enough, they immediately stretched out to us handfuls of pine nuts, which seemed an exercise of hospitality.” (John C. Frémont, 1845)

The California Gold Rush of 1849 poured streams of westbound emigrants through Washoe territory along several established wagon trails. Washoe oral tradition states that the Washoe preferred to avoid contact with these unpredictable strangers. Then in 1851, John Reese established Mormon Station (Genoa) as an emigrant supply stop in the Carson Valley in Washoe territory. Other Euroamericans followed, settling most of the rich valleys along the eastern Sierra slope, thus excluding the Washoe from critical portions of their land.

In 1859, discovery of the Comstock Lode brought the “Rush to Washoe” (as the region was then known), with an eastern and western influx of tens of thousands of emigrants through and to Washoe territory, profoundly altering Washoe lands, resources, and life. Most painful, however, was the loss of access to important locales of Lake Tahoe and destruction of the surrounding forests to feed fuel and timber to the mines.

Resilience & Ingenuity

Despite the life-altering changes brought by Europeans, the Washoe people responded with resilience and ingenuity — as well as sorrow. Men soon began working as ranch hands, farm workers, and laborers. Washoe women became domestic workers on farms, ranches, and in towns. By the 1890s, Washoe women supplemented their summer visits to Lake Tahoe by selling basketry to tourists.

Basketry, long central to the Washoe way, became an important economic resource for Washoe women. Between 1895-1935, basketry reached its peak sales as tourists and collectors eagerly sought Washoe baskets. Many of the baskets in this exhibit are from those early basketry collections. Basketry, essential to their creation, now marked enduring cultural strength and celebration of Washoe life in the face of all that had changed.

Although denied reservations offered to other tribes beginning in the 1860s, the Washoe Tribe and tribal members were ultimately offered compensation for their lands lost to early Euroamerican settlement through “land allotments,” “colonies,” and land purchases beginning in the late 19th century.

Washoe Lands

“The Maker of All Things was counting out seeds that were to become the different tribes. He counted them out on a big winnowing tray in equal numbers. West Wind, the mischievous wind, watched until the Maker had divided the seeds into equal piles on the basket. Then he blew a gust of wind that scattered the seeds to the east. Most of the seeds that were to have been the Washoe people were blown away. This is why the Washoe are fewer in number than other tribes.” —Jean Dexter, Washoe, Carson Colony, interviewed by Jo Ann Nevers in Wa She Shu: A Washo Tribal History (1976)

The Washoe tribe is smaller in population than surrounding tribes, as the origin story above relates, but their resource-rich homeland is extensive, with every prominent geographic feature having a name and story. Notably, basketry is central in the creation story of the Washoe people.

Washoe lands bridge the Sierra Nevada and Great Basin. The Lake Tahoe area, meaning “the edge of the lake,” is the center and heart of Washoe homelands. The waterways and old- growth forests of the Sierra offered food from fish runs, small and large game, and plants, as well as building materials for mountain shelters. Medicines and materials for clothing, shoes, nets, basketry, and other important tools were also found in this rich environment.

The Washoe people moved to lower elevations as temperatures began to drop. Below Lake Tahoe were the fertile Great Basin valleys, extending north to south along the eastern Sierra slope and crossed by three major Sierra rivers supporting Lahontan cutthroat spawning runs in the spring and fall. A variety of fish, waterbirds, large and small game, seeds, berries, roots, and nuts were all available in these environs. Piñon-juniper woodlands, abundant south of the Truckee River, provided pinenuts, the critical winter staple for most of this region. Acorns, another staple, were available on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada or through trade with western neighbors.

WEAVING FROM THE EARTH

Selecting Materials

Basketry, lightweight and durable, is ideally suited for storage and transport of goods by people who followed seasonal rounds to make their living. But a basket, net, shoe, or house is the finished product: work begins long before with monitoring plants throughout the year in known or sometimes newly discovered habitats. Plants are then harvested to ensure good quality of material, but also to provide for future growth and availability of the resource. Processing materials follows and then weaving begins.

Washoe weavers today still prefer to monitor, gather, and process plants in the traditional ways, usually taught to them by an older female relative. Although no longer pursuing seasonal rounds, weavers find this deep connection to their ancestral lands an essential part of their work and well-being.

By far the most utilized plant for coiled basketry is willow, Salix spp., used for the foundation coils (horizontal element or warp) and sewing thread (vertical element or weft). Decorative elements are created by substituting colored thread for plain willow thread: dark red from western redbud, black from bracken fern root, light brown from “sunburned” willow thread, and dark brown from willow threads with the outer skin intact.

Weavers sometimes use serviceberry, chokecherry, and Woods’ rose when needing a strong structural support, such as for burden baskets, winnowing trays, and cradle baskets.

Twining of mats, clothing, sandals, cordage, nets, decoys, and such also used willow, but additionally relied upon tule reed, cattail, and dogbane.

UTILITARIAN BASKETRY

Long before Washoe women created “fancy baskets” for sale, they wove baskets for the daily business of life: baskets to collect, carry, store, process, cook, and eat food items, as well as to carry and tend children and store household items.

The names and descriptions of various basketry types are known from consultation with contemporary Washoe people, who have continued the tradition of basketry since the Beginning, and from historical documentation of Washoe basketry by Euroamericans beginning in the latter half of the 1800s. The Washoe names of baskets identify both technique (coiling or twining) and function. The plant primarily used in making baskets was willow, Salix spp.

The artistic form pioneered by Louisa Keyser is the most renowned type of coiled basket, but other coiled baskets were also made to serve food and store valuable items, and as specific- use baskets, such as the large Globular Cooking baskets used to boil mush and leach acorns, and the smaller dipper or scoop and Globular baskets for pouring or serving. Three-rod and one-rod coiling were both used, but three-rod was the preferred and more complex form.

Twining creates less rigid containers than coiling and can be either open or closed. Open- twined baskets, included the large conical gathering baskets used for pinecone harvesting. Other open-twined forms included the winnowing tray, seed beater, fish trap, fish carrier, and cradleboard. Closed twining creates a finer or tighter weave as needed for various functions, such as in the small gathering baskets for seeds, insects, berries, etc., seed winnowing or parching trays, and water bottles. Closed twine forms typically have a decorative border.

In addition to the items displayed here, many other aspects of Washoe daily life depended on fiber technology: rabbit and fish nets, fish dams, cordage, sleeping mats, shades, walls for insulation, clothing, shoes, hats, and more were all fashioned from plant fibers.

MAKING BASKETS

Basketry encompasses a wide range of woven objects including mats, sandals, and a variety of containers such as bags, bowls, trays, jars, burden baskets, fish traps/weirs, cradles, and hats all manufactured using one of the three basic weaving techniques – twining, plaiting, and coiling. Skilled weavers, however, may vary each basic weave to improve function and add decoration.

Twining

Twining is a basket weave that twists two separate weaving strips (wefts) around a stationary element (warp). The twist secures the weave and lessens the chance of unraveling. If a wooden rod is chosen for the warp, the basket will be rigid, while a flexible cordage warp results in a flexible basket. Decoration can be achieved by wrapping contrasting colored fibers around the wefts, introducing an additional weft strip to the twist, and alternating warp crossings.

Plaiting

The simplest weave is plaited, also called plain weave. This technique refers to making basketry by weaving strips of raw material over and under each other at right angles. Although plain woven baskets are easily made, they are also prone to unraveling when one or more strips break. Plain weave patterns are created by varying the angle that strips cross one another, selecting different colored strips, and changing the number or spacing of crossed strips.

Coiling

Coiling is a basketry type where the weaver sews stationary horizontal elements or a set of elements (the foundation) together. The weaver can create variation in the basket by keeping the stitches close together or separating them so that the foundation can be seen. Different foundation types and stitches allow the weaver to create varying looks in their basketry. Using three willow sticks as the foundation gives the basket a ribbed look on the surface, and also makes the basket strong. When the weaver uses a single stick or element as the foundation, it speeds up the weaving process, but the basketry then lacks stability. The type of stitch (simple, intricate, or wrapping) the weaver uses can add fineness and decoration to the baskets. Decorations and designs can also be incorporated when the weaver uses different colored materials as the threads.