Basketmaker culture

“ It is very interesting to watch the small children in their endeavors to make the rougher baskets, and then, as they grow in skill, try the finer work. Pul-a-gas ́-a-a is not more than eight years of age, and yet a basket—kű-ű—she brought to me was one of her own make, and it now occupies a place in my collection. The work is irregular and crude, but shows skill, and if the child has patience to stick to it, in time she will become one of the most accomplished basket makers of the tribe. ”

“ The importance and influence of basketry is being recognized now and the work is being carried on in earnest. Within the past five years it has made a great jump and in most institutions where manual training has been introduced, basket making has attained a prominent place in the training of the child. ”

“ It should be noted also that the hearty release of energy is, in every good game, required to keep within the rules. This is particularly true in basket-ball, which takes high rank as an indoor game for boys. ”

“ Basketball, you see, isn't like football, where the quarter calls a signal that tells some player what to do; nor like baseball, where you field a certain position, or bat yourself on base, or try to bring another fellow home. No, basketball is different, a lot different. When the ball comes to you, maybe you dribble it along and pass it to somebody else, and maybe you try for a basket yourself. ”

“ Of necessity it was born, and in its infancy was made into simple forms, but very soon its importance to man was so duly felt and appreciated that new forms took shape, and its uses were so extended that the early basket makers vied with one another in producing pleasing work and in discovering new and various kinds of materials to put into it.
Though the Chinese and Japanese have sent us, for long years, marvelous things of beauty, it is to our American Indian that we owe our debt for beauty and artistry of this industry; for industry it is. ”

“ These official rules are intended especially for girls' basket ball as played in most of the well-known colleges, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Wellesley, etc., and by the majority of schools except in and around New York, in which section both girls and boys play the boys’ game. This differs from the girls’ in having greater freedom and consequently more action, players being allowed to run to any part where they think they can be of most use within the extreme limits of the field. ”

“ Dancing is too old, too general, too instinctive, and too important, not to be recognized as a means to social culture. Here again the sane teacher can be an efficient supervisor. He can take care that the young people do not become entirely dance-minded.
Sports and Games.—The various sports should not be forgotten. Skating, curling, and hockey, basketball, and volley ball, are all fine winter sports; in summer, teams should be organized in baseball, tennis, and all the proper athletic sports and games. Play should be supervised to a certain extent; over-supervision will kill it. ”

“ Most of the ordinary English field games—tennis, basket-ball, etc.—are played with skill and vigor, and in addition to these there are races of various kinds, devised to show, not simply fleetness of foot, but quickness of hand and wit as well. ”

“ As this nerve-racking music holds the spectators under its awful spell, the basket begins to rock, the contortionist-subject gradually raises himself inside the basket, and when the noise is at its height he straightens up in the basket and raises it with his back as far as it will go. ”

“ The girls of Central High will then get a bad name for playing foul—and we can’t afford to have that reputation.”
151CHAPTER XIX—HESTER FOULS THE GAME
Basketball is not an easy game to learn, but it is both a splendid exercise as played under the rules of the Girls’ Branch and a game of skill.
Because of the many rules, and sub-divisions of rules, the players must bring to the basket-ball court the quickest intelligence and a serious desire to excel. No laughing or talking is allowed during play. The success of the game is based upon the players giving to it their undivided attention. ”

“ When the excitement has continued sufficiently long to be supposed to have effected the charm, the basket is seen to move, and the boy or girl rising from under it, apparently unconscious of what is doing, moves and dances gracefully but wildly, in unison with the music. ”

“ Pala Boys at Work on the Farm.
And how wonderfully those fingers handle the splints. No white woman has ever surpassed, in digital dexterity, these native Indians. Do you wonder? Watch this weaver day after day as her basket grows. A week, two, three, a month, two, three months pass by, and the basket is not yet finished. Time as well as creative skill and digital dexterity are required to make a basket, and it is no uncommon thing to find three, four and even five or six months consumed before the basket is done, and the weaver's heart is secretly rejoiced by the beauty of the work. ”

“ This morning I overheard certain girls planning to go out to the Omnibus House after school to-morrow and dig up the poor hatchet and flaunt it in the seniors' faces the day of the opening basketball game, simply to rattle us. Just as though it wouldn't upset your team as much as ours. It's an idiotic trick, at any rate, and anything but funny. Now I propose to take four of our class, and you must select four of yours. We'll hustle out there the minute school is over to-morrow, and be ready to receive the marauders when they arrive. ”

“ In line horizontally with the forward edge of each front desk, a chalk line is drawn on the floor at the end of each aisle, which serves as a throwing line, from which players throw their bean bags into the baskets.
The game is a competition of skill rather than of speed. At a signal from the teacher, the first pupil in each row stands, places his toe even with the throwing line, and tosses his bean bag toward the basket. If the bag goes into the basket, it scores five. Should it lodge on the edge of the basket, it scores three. Should it fall outside, there is no score. ”

“ Next to tennis, basket-ball is the very best sport I know of. You've got to try for tennis, too, in the spring, but that's a long way off. Will you go out for basket-ball?"
"Yes, Natalie, if I have the time, but I've got to devote myself a little more to study from now on, so don't expect me to practise very often. I'll make an awful try, for I've always wanted to be able to play basket-ball. I've [158] never been in a game in my life, so of course I couldn't hope to make anything."
"Lots of girls make the teams who have never played till they came here. It's good hard practice does it. ”

“ But neither our wives, our sisters, our daughters nor our sweethearts, may play Base Ball on the field. They may play Cricket, but seldom do; they may play Lawn Tennis, and win championships; they may play Basket Ball, and achieve laurels ”

“ Yes; certainly the game has its psychology—a part of the fine, healthy, undegenerate psychology of the whole Nation. The professional Base Ball player is no thug trained to brutality like the prize-fighter, no half-developed little creature like the jockey, no cruel coward like the bull fighter. He is the natural development of the American boy's inborn love of manly, skillful, outdoor sport—sport busying brain and body and not harming any one or anything. The average boy who loves Base Ball is not the sort of boy who loves to go off with a gun intent on killing some poor bird. ”

“ It can’t be much of a trade. Anybody can make a basket that has got any Indian suet. I can make as good a basket as anybody.”
“You can make a corn-basket or a clam-basket; but the basket-makers make chairs, and cradles, and carriages, and fishing-creels, and work-stands. It is as much of a trade as a joiner’s or a shoemaker’s. There is more call for basket-work in England than here. ”

“ Basket making, which handwork the children love best to do, not only develops their judgment, makes keen their observation, makes them discriminating, but it has a stimulating effect upon their minds and awakens in them the desire to put forth their best efforts. Hanging baskets, scrap baskets, trays, etc., mean something more to them than a piece of basket work done merely because of its utility. ”

“ True sportsmanship should be revived and cultivated. There is no reason why there should not be found in every neighborhood, and especially at every school center, all kinds of plays and games, each in its own time and place and having its own patronage—marbles, tops, swings, horseshoes, "I spy," anti-over, pull-away, prisoner's base, tennis, croquet, volley ball, basketball, skating, coasting, skiing, baseball, and football. Horizontal bars, turning pole, and other apparatus should be provided in every playground. ”

“ Time has no value to them, and the creek banks are covered with the best willows in the world for basket-making. The basket-making art is the only talent these squaws have, while the bucks excel in tanning buckskin and other skins. These they trade to the Navajo Indians for silver and blankets. Then they race their ponies or gamble for the ownership of the coveted blankets. How they do love to gamble! Horses, blankets, squaws—anything and everything changes hands under the spell of the magic cards. Even the squaws and children gamble for beads and bright-colored calico. ”

“ Basket-balls, baseballs, footballs, hockey sticks, bats, golf clubs, boxing gloves, and everything else for the athlete had been boosted and knocked by each side. And here the two competitors glowered at each other less than a stone’s throw apart. To Vern, who all his life had read their advertising and used their goods, it seemed like coming suddenly upon the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte.
The job hunter meditated. “Let’s see. The year we had the big championship team we used the Bloss basket-ball; the year after that we used the Landon. ”

“ There is really no other form of outdoor sport which constantly demands such accurate co-ordination between the mind and body as this national game of ours. And that is rather fine, when you come to think about it.
"Base Ball elevates, and it fits the American character. The emotional and moral as well as the physical side of a man's nature are brought into play by Base Ball. I know of no other medium which, as completely as Base Ball, joins the physical, mental, emotional, and moral sides of a man's composite being into a complete and homogeneous whole. ”

“ And the fact that older ladies of distinction dance with dignity, has an inevitable effect upon younger ones, so that at balls at least, dancing has not degenerated into gymnastics or contortions.
The extreme reverse of a "smart" Boston ball is one—no matter where—which has a roomful of people who deport themselves abominably, who greet each other by waving their arms aloft, who dance like Apaches or jiggling music-box figures, and who scarcely suggest an assemblage of even decent—let alone well-bred—people. ”

“ Should one girl unintentionally run against another during the game, precious moments cannot be wasted in apologies, there being no time for either excuses or tears. While the sport is going on the player’s mind should be all earnestness and determination, too intent upon the game to allow thoughts for other things. Girls will soon acquire greater moral and physical courage by playing basket ball, and sufficient nerve to keep back the tears. ”

“ Not so the American Ball Player. He may be a veritable Beau Brummel in social life. He may be the Swellest Swell of the Smart Set in Swelldom; but when he dons his Base Ball suit, he says good-bye to society, doffs his gentility, and becomes—just a Ball Player! He knows that his business now is to play ball, and that first of all he is expected to attend to business. ”

“ One word may be merely suggested for consideration concerning games in girls' schools, and that is the comparative value of them as to physical development. The influence of the game in vogue in each country will always be felt, but it is worth attention that some games, as hockey, conduce to all the attitudes and movements which are least to be desired, and that others, as basket-ball, on the contrary tend—if played with strict regard to rules—to attitudes which are in themselves beautiful and tending to grace of movement. ”

“ Basket making is one of the principal employments engaged in by the blind. It requires some strength, but more skill and practice. A basket maker's tools can be bought for $5, and last a lifetime. On looking for women basket makers in Philadelphia, we found a German widow, who could not make herself understood in English, but my companion conversed with her in German, and learned that she had supported herself and son for six years, by making baskets for the trade. She buys the willow ready for use at seven cents a pound. ”

“ That decided, the contestants are gayly decked with ribbons, a band strikes up a lively air, a capering clown clears the way, and the game begins. He who throws takes the eggs, and one after another swiftly whirls them the length of the course, and into the chaff-filled basket, which is held in the hands of an assistant. Occasionally he makes a diversion by pitching a hard one to be scrambled for by the crowds of children who have assembled to see the sport. ”

“ The child of seven or eight years may make a simple mat and basket and find it play work, while the older child may make beautiful useful baskets and trays for the home.
xv
Originality in the child has full play and should always be encouraged since the field of work in this ground is abundant; and he should never be discouraged, no matter how loose the weaving may be nor how crude it may look: he will soon be able, through comparison, to discover his mistakes and correct the poor work. ”