Weaving a Legacy - Cloth: Indian Baskets and the People of Owens Valley, California

Situated on the western edge of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and White-Inyo mountain ranges, Owens Valley has been home for thousands of years to the Owens Valley Paiute and their southern neighbors, the Panamint Shoshone. The willow baskets both groups created are noteworthy for their [...]
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Situated on the western edge of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and White-Inyo mountain ranges, Owens Valley has been home for thousands of years to the Owens Valley Paiute and their southern neighbors, the Panamint Shoshone. The willow baskets both groups created are noteworthy for their complex construction and durability, and their materials and designs reflected available resources as well as the seminomadic existence that characterized life in the Great Basin for generations. Since the mid-nineteenth-century arrival of non-Indians into the Valley, the baskets have changed in style and design. Hand-woven baskets became more decorative, smaller in size, and specifically made for sale to tourists and collectors. Weaving a Legacy places those changes in the context of the region's dramatic social history that included violent conflict between the local Indians and settlers, forced relocation of native peoples, misguided governmental assimilation policies, and the Los Angeles aqueduct controversy. In addition, the volume closely examines basketry techniques and technology, historic weavers and their lineages, contemporary weavers, and basket collectors. The text is extensively illustrated with photographs of people, landscapes, and baskets. Among the legacies of these baskets are the stories they evoke, many of which the authors recount in this beautiful work.