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.

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

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. Weaving a Legacy places those changes in the context of the region's dramatic social history. 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 black-and-white 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.

Redwood Valley Pomo master weaver Corine Pearce describes the history, wild-crafting, distinct styles and contemporary use of traditional cradle baskets.

This richly illustrated photographic overview captures the beauty and artistry of the remarkable world-class, Native American Indian baskets of California, circa 1895 to 1940, known as the Florescence or Flowering. It is a tribute to these artisans and includes biographical snapshots of weavers and portraits of their masterpiece California Indian baskets, which today exist in museums and private collections throughout the United States. Collecting highly complex and artistic Native American baskets became a successful tourist business in the late 19th and early 20th century -- tourism in the United States exploded as a result of the expansion of the railway system to hitherto relatively inaccessible locations. This new business benefitted both collectors of this art form and the weavers who created them. The transition from woven baskets used for utilitarian use to more durable and less expensive metal cookware and storage vessels allowed weavers the time needed to innovate and create baskets specifically catering to tourist interests. During this period of Florescence, some of the world's most intricate, beautiful, and artistic baskets were woven, particularly by highly-talented weavers representing several Native American tribes located throughout California.

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.

Lila O'Neale's Yurok-Karok Basket Weavers, first published in 1932, remains one of the finest and most comprehensive books devoted to American Indian basketry. In contrast to the typical treatment of tribal arts in her day, which saw them as homogeneous, anonymous, and conservative, O'Neale regarded the weavers as individuals, with personal styles and outlooks and a capacity for innovation. A pioneer in the study of Native American art, she presented the art from the weaver's point of view. In addition to an introduction by O'Neale scholar Margot Schevill, this edition includes an appendix listing the identities and tribal affiliations of O'Neale's 43 consultants.