Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/220

206 Their greatest manufacture was that of baskets; they made hundreds of them yearly, of all shapes and sizes. The larger ones were woven from long, slender willows, the smaller from delicate strips of the willow bark. Some were decorated with beads and feathers, in others indescribable designs were worked with colored



barks. The baskets that were made for cooking purposes were water-tight. Meats, soup, and so forth, were boiled in them by dropping in hot stones, replaced by others as fast as they cooled. Mortars were also used in this way, as the direct heat of fire was apt to break them. For frying meat, hot flat rocks were used. Large cone-shaped baskets were made to transfer household effects, gather food, and in general to carry. They were bound on the back, fastened by a belt about the waist and by a band from the top of the basket around the forehead.

The mahala was invariably the burden-bearer: these great baskets, loaded with all they could hold, were never strapped to the back of the man; he carried only his bow and arrow. Their method of starting a fire was most skillful. Two round pieces of hard wood were used, one tapered to a point at one end. These were rubbed together between the hands until the friction produced a spark, which, thrown into a heap of fine, dry bark, produced fire almost instantly. I wondered how it could be done