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to conceive how the breakage of a gourd thus surrounded by a rude sustaining or carrying net led to the independent use of the net after the removal of the broken pieces, and thus nets ultimately would be made for carrying purposes without reference to any other vehicle. Weaving once begun, no matter how rough or crude, improvement was bound to follow, and hence, the origin of the basket.

In Indian basketry we may look and find instruction as to the higher development of our primitive people. There is no question that baskets preceded pottery-making and the close and fine weaving of textures, so the ethnologist finds in "the progressive steps of their manufacture a preparatory training for pottery, weaving and other primitive arts."

Basket-making was a common industry with all the Indians of the American Continent. In the North, baskets were, and still are, made, and we know of their manufacture by the Indians of Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Lousisiana. Baskets have also been found among the remains of the Mound Builders. In the ruins of Southern Colorado and that interesting region of Arizona and New Mexico, some of the prehistoric graves contain so many baskets as to give their occupants the name of "The Basket Makers."

"There are no savages on earth so rude that they have no form of basketry. The birds and beasts are basket-makers, and some fishes construct for themselves little retreats where they may hide. Long before the fire-maker, the potter, or even the cook, came the mothers of the Fates, spinning threads, drawing them out and cutting them off. Coarse basketry or matting is found charred in very ancient sepulchers. With few exceptions women, the wide world over, are the basket-makers, netters and weavers."—Otis T. Mason.

Of the antiquity of baskets there can be little doubt. Col. James Jackson, U. S. A., says:

"Pottery making and basket weaving are as old as the human race. As far back as there are any relics of humanity are found the traces of these industries, supplying no doubt a very positive human need. From the graves of the mound builders, from Etruscan tombs—far beyond the dawn of Roman power—from the ruins of Cyclopean construction, Chaldean antiquities and from Egyptian catacombs come the evidences of their manufacture. Aboriginal occupation of the American continents seems to be as old, if not older, than that of either Europe or Asia, and when we look upon the baskets and pottery gathered here we behold the results of an industry that originated in the very dawn of human existence and has been continued with but little change down to the present time. Our word basket has itself changed but little from its original, the Welsh "basgawd" meaning literally a weaving or putting together of splinters. The ancient Welsh, or Britons, were expert basket makers, and Roman annals tell us that the halls of wealthy Roman citizens were decorated with the beautiful and costly produce of their handiwork. Made from whatever substances were most appropriate or convenient they have been shaped by the needs and decorated by the fancy or superstitions of barbaric or semi-civilized peoples, and have served all purposes from plates to dwelling houses."

"Among primitive arts, basketry also furnishes the most striking illustration of the inventive genius, fertility of resource and almost