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Tools and Baskets

The highly prized obsidian that the Miwok were able to trade for with the Mono was a primary tool material. Obsidians is hard. Black, glassy volcanic rock, and is able to be chipped and shaped into sharp, strong blades. Not only were these blades used as arrowheads to help catch wild game for food, they were also shaped to form a variety of other hand held tools.

Bone and antlers were also used to make tools and implements. An awl - a pointed sharp punch tool - was made from the done of the deer and was important in making baskets. Whistles for ceremonies were made from rabbit and bird bines. Antler bones were used to shape the chunks of obsidian into arrowheads and blades. Scrapers to prepared deer skins for clothing and containers were made from deer bones. And antlers were even used to op out the acorns the busy woodpeckers stored in trees and were then gathered by the native peoples when food stores grew low in winter.

One of the most remarkable crafts of the Miwok was their basket-making. These truly beautiful containers were made in one of two ways.

Twining : these baskets were built around a frame work of dried plant spines that began at the bottom of the baskets, and then were shaped up to form the vertical side walls of the baskets. In between these spines - which looked like bicycle spokes in a way - other plants grasses were woven between them from the bottom of the basket up, creating a tightly woven wall that gave the final form to the basket, right up to the mouth of it opening. Elaborate designs were woven into these twined baskets by using naturally colored or died grasses to contrast against the basic light brown color of the basket.

Coiling : These baskets were made by creating a long continuous snake-like shape of plant materials that was then coiled from the bottom of the basket up and around the walls, to the mouth. As the layers were coiled round and round, other fibers were woven between the layers of the coils to hold them together, essentially sewing the coils into a rigid shape.

They decorated their baskets with feathers from local birds - the top knots of quails, the re heads of the woodpecker. These feathers were sometimes woven right into the outside of the basket. Other items they were attached to hang from the outside.

· To construct a paper Indian basket, click here and you will be able to print out a pattern to color, cut and form into a basket.