OLD ANTIQUE PANAMINT INDIAN BASKETS

This RIVERSIDE MUNICIPAL MUSEUM exhibit features fine 1800s 1900s Panamint Indian basketry artifacts and illustrates the great research, care and visual presentation that the museum curators put into their extensive California Indian public Native American Indian museum exhibits.

Excerpts from the Riverside Municipal Museum placards:

Main placard:
THE PANAMINT primarily gathered pine nuts, mesquite beans, and seeds for food. Bands of families lived in small villages made up of conical brush houses. They spent their winters in Death Valley, taking advantage of ripening plant resources, and hunting animals and migratory birds. During the winter, the Panamint people enjoyed a rich ceremonial life, which included storytelling and singing. Winter was also a time for basket making.

The materials the Panamint basket makers used reflected the plants from their environment and the seasonal round of their lifestyle. Willow for white, devil's claw and bulrush for clack, and red yucca root were coiled into intricately patterned baskets. Originally made as tools for daily life, later they were made specifically to sell as souvenirs. The opening of Death Valley's Furnace creek Hotel in 1927 led to an increase in baskets made for the tourist trade.

Top basket on left:
BOTTLENECK BASKET, circa 1900.
Outlined stepped rectangles with quail plume designs circle this basket.
It may be of Panamint or possibly Tubatalabal origin.
Gift of C. E. Rumsey

Photo:
INDIAN WOMAN WITH BASKET, Death Valley area, circa 1890-1893.
C. Hart Merriam Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Bottom basket on left:
BASKET BOWL, early 20th century.
Two black horizontal bands of stepped diagonal zigzag lines decorate this bowl.
Gift of Norton Allen

Bottom center basket on left:
BASKET JAR, circa 1900.
Attributed to Susy Wilson of Johnson Canyon, Death Valley.
The flower design on the back is done in black devil's claw, while black dyed bulrush is used to make the lightening bolts on the body.
Gift of Norton Allen

Bottom basket on right:
BOTTLENECK BASKET, circa 1900.
Part of the Cornelius E. Rumsey collection, this was donated to the museum in 1925 and reported stolen in 1962. Christopher L. Moser, Ph.D., Museum Curator of Anthropology (1979-2003), located it in a 1983 auction catalog and was responsible for its return to the Riverside Municipal Museum as a gift from Eva Slater.
Gift of C. E. Rumsey

-Riverside Municipal Museum

PHOTO ACCESS: Panamint Native American California Indian baskets contributed by the RIVERSIDE MUNICIPAL MUSEUM, Riverside, CA.

These old California Indian basket pictures are part of the Indigenous Peoples of California Basket Museums:

CALIFORNIA INDIAN BASKET MUSEUMS Kumeyaay basketry, basket makers, basket weaving photos pictures. Large antique and contemporary California Indian basket so-called mission baskets sections featuring private historical basket collections and the Indigenous Southern California basket artists of San Diego and northern Baja California, Mexico, including Indigenous lifestyle documentaries and information to buy and sell fine Native American California basketry.

Photos by G BALLARD, San Diego