This unique book provides a complete study of the exquisite Native American basketry from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Monterey Bay region north to Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino and eastward across the Sacramento Valley to the crest of the Sierras. Baskets of the Pomo, Ohlone (Costanoan), Coast Miwok, Esselen, Huchnom, Lake Miwok, Maidu, Wappo, and Yuki people are lavishly illustrated and knowledgably and sensitively described. Color photographs and drawings illustrate the rare, fine California Indian baskets from museum and private collections in the United States and Europe. The vast majority of these baskets are illustrated for the first time. Ralph Shanks is vice president of the Miwok Archaeological Preserve of Marin. Lisa Woo Shanks is editor of the Basketry of California and Oregon Series. They are the authors of The North American Indian Travel Guide.

California Indian Baskets is lavishly illustrated in full color with rare baskets from the magnificent collections of the University of California, Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution, The British Museum, Madrid's Museo de America, Royal Museum of Scotland, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Southwest Museum and many other world-class museums and private collections. The vast majority of these rare baskets have never appeared in print before. Made possible in part through the support and vision of three California Indian tribes, this remarkable book is the result of decades of research by noted basketry scholar Ralph Shanks. Expertly researched and well written, California Indian Baskets honors the achievements of the First Californians. The book illuminates Native American art, history, technology, population movements, cultural interactions, and native plant uses. The book demonstrates basketry studies can rank with archeology, linguistics and DNA research in understanding and appreciating Native American culture and history. This is especially true in California where baskets were central to daily life. It was through basketry that the most populous and linguistically diverse Native American population in the United States was able to create a highly productive economy and vibrant cultural life with no agriculture and very limited use of pottery. Native California was not "pre-agricultural," but rather a land where basketry was combined with native plant resources so successfully that agriculture was not needed.

The peoples of northwestern Califonia's Lower Klamath River area have long been known for their fine basketry. Two early-twentieth-century weavers of that region, Elizabeth Hickox and her daughter Louise, created especially distinctive baskets that are celebrated today for their elaboration of technique, form, and surface designs. Marvin Cohodas now explores the various forces that influenced Elizabeth Hickox, analyzing her relationship with the curio trade, and specifically with dealer Grace Nicholson, to show how those associations affected the development and marketing of baskets. He explains the techniques and patterns that Hickox created to meet the challenge of weaving design into changig three-dimensional forms. In addition to explicating the Hickoxes' basketry, Cohodas interprets its uniqueness as a form of intersocietal art, showing how Elizabeth first designed her distinctive trinket basket to convey a particular view of the curio trade and its effect on status within her community. Through its close examination of these superb practitioners of basketry, Basket Weavers for the California Curio Trade addresses many of today's most pressing questions in Native American art studies concerning individuality, patronage, and issues of authenticity. Graced with historic photographs and full-color plates, it reveals the challenges faced by early-twentieth-century Native weavers. "Extremely well written and based on an impressive amount of archival research. . . . It skillfully interweaves biography, rigorous stylistic analysis, and social history into an impressive story."--Janet Berlo, editor, The Early Years of Native American Art History Published with the assistance of The Southwest Museum, Los Angeles.

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Marin Museum of the American Indian.

Presents over sixty examples of beautiful California Indian basketry, with commentary upon each basket by native basketweavers, scholars, and California Indian artists in other media.

A complex look at California Native ecological practices as a model for environmental sustainability and conservation. John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts. M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.