03/03/02

Yokuts coiled bottleneck basket, of characteristic form, woven on a deergrass bundle foundation in sedge, brakenfern root, and redbud with a polychrome design of a three "rattlesnake" bands separated by small stacked blocks forming checkered diagonal bands, trimmed in quail topnots around the shoulder (17 attached, 3 loose in basket, others are missing). Ten coils/inch, twenty stitches/inch. Collected on the Tule Indian Reservation in Porterville, CA prior to 1918. Collected by donor's mother, Louise Victoria Sprott who worked at the bank in Porterville. Local weavers would bring baskets to the bank where Louise Sprott would buy them. LV Sprott went to Alaska in 1917 or 1918 and would have collected these baskets prior to then. (Mary Louise Stong 6/16/01) These four Yokut Indian baskets were purchased by Louise Victoria Sprott from the Indians at the Tule River Indian Reservation East of Porterville, Califronia. The Indians came into the Porterville First National Bank to sell their baskets. The time would have been shortly prior to 1918 when Miss Sprott went to Juneau for a year. She married Edwin H. Stong in San Francisco in 1919 on her way back to Porterville.