The art instincts of primitive people naturally were exceedingly limited in expression. Their ignorance of tools not only restricted their opportunities for the development of handicraft ability, but also deprived them of many materials they otherwise might have used. Hence whenever an outlet was discovered for their artistic tendencies they were impelled to focus upon it in a remarkable degree. With few tools, limited scope of materials, and next to no incitement to higher endeavor as the result of contact with other peoples, they yet developed several arts to a higher degree than has ever yet been attained by the white race. One of the chief of these artistic industries was the making of baskets.

Look at one of these exquisite pieces of aboriginal workmanship and you will be astonished at the perfection of its form, its marvelous symmetry, the evenness of its weave, the suitability of the material of which it is made, its remarkable adaptability to the use for which it is intended, the rare and delicate harmoniousness of its colors, and the artistic conception of its design. These qualities all presuppose pure aboriginal work, for directly the Indian begins to yield to the dictation of the superior (!) race, she proceeds to make baskets of hideous and inartistic shape, abominable combinations of color, and generally senseless designs.

Let us watch these basket-makers at work, as we find them at Pala today. The weaver must first secure the materials. For the filling of the inner coil she gathers a quantity of a wild grass, or broom corn, the stems of which perfectly fulfil the purpose. The wrapping splints are made of three or four products of the vegetable kingdom. The white splints are secured from willows which are peeled and then split and torn apart so as to make the desired size. The thinness and pliability of the splint is determined by scraping off as much as is needed of the inside. A black splint is found in the cuticle of the martynia, or cat's claw, which grows profusely on the hill-sides. Sometimes, however, the white willow splints are soaked in hot sulphur water for several days, and this blackens them. This water is secured from one of the hot springs which are found all over Southern California. The rare and delicate shades of brown in the splints used by the Pala Indians are gained from the root of the tule. These roots are dug out of the mud of marshy places and vary in shade, from the most delicate creamy-brown to the deepest chestnut. Carefully introduced into a basket they make harmonies in color that fairly thrill the senses with delight. Now and again an added note of color is found in the red of the red-bud, which, when gathered at the proper time, gives a sturdy red, not too vivid or brilliant, but that harmonizes perfectly with the white, black and brown. As a rule these are the only colors used by the older and more artistic of the Pala weavers. Now and again, a smart youngster, trained at the white man's school, will come back with corrupted ideas of color value, and will flippantly make gorgeously colored splints with a few packages of the aniline dyes that, to the older weavers, are simply accursed. But even the most foolish and least discerning of the white purchasers of baskets made of these degraded colors cannot fail, in time, to learn how hideous they are when compared with the natural, normal and artistic work of the more conservative of the weavers.

With her materials duly prepared the weaver is now ready to go to work. What drawing has she to represent the shape of her basket; what complicated plan of the design she intends to incorporate in it? How much thought has she given to these two important details? Where does she get them from? What art books does she consult? She cannot go down to the art or department store and purchase Design No. 48b, or 219f, and her religion, if she be a good woman (that is, good from the Indian, not the white man or Christian standpoint), will not allow her to copy either one of her own or another weaver's form or design. She, therefore, is left to the one resort of the true artist. She must create her work from Nature, out of her own observations and reflections. Thus patterning after Nature the shapes of her baskets are always perfect, always uncriticizable. There is nothing fantastic, wild, or crazy about them, as we often find in the original creations of the white race. They are patterned after the Master Artist's work, and therefore are beyond criticism.

But who can tell the hours of patient and careful observation, the thought, the reflection, put upon these shapes and designs. The busy little brain behind those dark-brown eyes; the creative imagination that sees, that vizualizes in the mind and can judge of its appearance when objectified, must be developed to a high degree to permit the use of such intricate, complicated and complex designs as are often found. There are no drawings made, no pencil and paper used, not even a sketch in the sand as some guessers would have the credulous believe. Everything is seen and worked out mentally, and with nothing but the mental image before her, the artist goes to work.

Seated in as easy a posture as she can find out-of-doors or in, her splints around her in vessels of water (the water for keeping them pliant), and an adequate supply of the broom-corn, or grass-stem, filling at hand, she rapidly makes the coiled button that is the center, the starting point of her basket. Her awl is the thigh-bone of a rabbit, unless she has yielded so far to the pressure of civilization as to use a steel awl secured at the trader's store for the purpose. Stitch by stitch the coil grows, each one sewed, by making a hole with the awl through the coil already made, to that coil. When the time comes for the introduction of the colored splint, she works on as certainly, surely and deftly as before. There is no hesitation. All is mapped out, the stitches counted, long before, and though to the outsider there is no possible resemblance discernible between what she is doing with anything known in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, the aboriginal weaver goes on with perfect confidence, seeing clearly the completed and artistic product of her brain and fingers.

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.

Is it surprising that the Indian often refuses to show, even when she knows she can make a sale, the latest product of her skill? The work is the joy of her heart; she has met the true test of the artist—she loves her work and, therefore, joys in it—how can she sell it? So when you ask her if she has a basket to sell she shakes her head, and when, days or weeks later, pressed by a real or fancied necessity, she brings it out and offers it for sale, you inwardly comment—perhaps openly—upon the untruthfulness of the Indian, when, in reality, she meant to the full her negative as to whether she had a basket to sell.

There are many skilful and accomplished basket weavers at Pala, who genuinely love their work. They are preserving for a prejudiced portion of the white race, proofs of an artistic skill possessed for centuries by this despised aboriginal race, and, at the same time, give delight, pleasure, joy and kindlier feelings to those of the white race who feel there is a fundamental truth enunciated in the doctrines of the universal Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of Man.