Abstract
This article underscores the romanticization of basket weaving in coastal Southern California in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the survival of weaving knowledge. The deconstruction of outdated terminology, mainly the misnomer “Mission Indian”, highlights the interest in California’s Spanish colonial past that spurred consumer interest in Southern California basketry and the misrepresentation of diverse Indigenous communities. In response to this interest weavers seized opportunities to not only earn a living at a time of significant social change but also to pass on their practice when Native American communities were assimilating into mainstream society. By providing alternative labelling approaches, this article calls for museums to update their collection records and to work in collaboration with Southern California’s Native American communities to respectfully represent their weaving customs.
Highlights
This study investigates the misrepresentation of coastal Southern California’s diverse Native communities and their basketry in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century publications and collecting circles
Taking anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber’s 1922 publication, Basket Designs of the Mission Indians of California as a case study, I argue that his decision to describe the basketry of over six different culture groups as “Mission Indian” baskets sustained a late nineteenth-century trend to label baskets from Southern California’s Native communities with colonial terminology
Though Gardiner, Nicholson, Kroeber, Mason, and James admired baskets by weavers who worked in the “Mission Indian” style, they did little to help improve the situation of Southern California’s Native peoples
Summary
This study investigates the misrepresentation of coastal Southern California’s diverse Native communities and their basketry in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century publications and collecting circles. Taking anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber’s 1922 publication, Basket Designs of the Mission Indians of California as a case study, I argue that his decision to describe the basketry of over six different culture groups as “Mission Indian” baskets sustained a late nineteenth-century trend to label baskets from Southern California’s Native communities with colonial terminology. At the time of the Spanish incursion, which officially began in 1769, coastal Southern California’s first peoples lived in villages typically overseen by hereditary leaders.1 This sense of community shifted as the Franciscans and soldiers relocated and recruited Native peoples to the missions. William McCawley observed that “The name Gabrielino, originally spelled Gabrieleños, came into use around 1876 to describe the Indians living in the Los Angeles area at the time of Spanish colonization in 1769” (McCawley 1996, p. 9)
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