Photo credit: Andrea Laforet

Basketry

Over the past 125 years, Sinixt families have preserved Information about three distinct traditions of Sinixt basketry:
1) birch bark containers made of a single, smooth sheet of bark from the paper birch, folded and sewn at the sides, often with the grain of the bark at right angles to the rim;
2) coiled baskets, made of cedar or spruce roots, and decorated with designs in grass, bleached white or dyed black

3) containers folded and sewn from a sheet of rough bark, quickly made for temporary use.      


During a visit by anthropologist, James Teit, to their home at the mouth of the Kootenay River in British Columbia in 1909, Antoinette Christian and her daughter, Mary Christian, provided information about both birch bark baskets, which were still common, and coiled baskets, which had been made by Sinixt women a generation before, but in 1909 were no longer made in that Arrow Lakes community. 

Birch Bark Baskets

Following his visit, Teit wrote to his senior colleague, Franz Boas, that he had purchased one birch bark basket and commissioned two more (Teit to Boas, May 20, 1909. American Philosophical Society ACLS Collection, MSS.497.3.B63c. Item 61). However, he eventually sent four birch bark baskets to the Field Museum in Chicago.

Michael Finley holding a traditional birch bark basket.
Michael Finley, Sinixt historian, holding a traditional birch bark basket. Field Museum, Chicago, December 2019
Four Sinixt (Lakes) baskets
The four Lakes baskets in the Field Museum, Chicago. From right to left, 111860, 111861, 111859, 111862

Teit did not visit the Sinixt communities in Washington State, and for more than a century his notes from his 1909 visit constituted the only publicly available information about Sinixt coiled basketry. However, within the past two years, coiled baskets preserved by Sinixt families have brought Teit’s notes to life.


Teit wrote that the Sinixt made several forms of coiled baskets, all circular in form, with the exception of an oblong storage basket. This basket was made for repeated, long-term use as a gathering basket.

Coiled Sinixt basket
Coiled basket 1. Teit wrote that the Sinixt made several forms of coiled baskets, all circular in form, with the exception of an oblong storage basket. This basket was made for repeated, long-term use as a gathering basket.
Coiled Sinixt basket base
The base shows the beginning of the coil stitching, and, where the stitches are worn, the inner strands of the coil. The basket has also been repaired.
Sinixt gathering basket
gathering basket
Interior of coiled Sinixt basket
The interior of the basket, showing the beginning of the coil and the walls built in a single spiral.
Coiled Sinixt basket
Showing the inner strands of the coil and the braiding used to finish the rim.
Coiled Sinixt basket
The basket maker folded stitches of white and black grass at first under, and then over each coil stitch to build a geometric design encircling the basket from base to rim.

Writing about the basketry made by Salish-speaking groups living in the interior of British Columbia and Washington State, Teit said: “A few rough temporary vessels of bark, juniper, cedar, willow, spruce, balsam, and white pine were occasionally used. These were folded of one piece and the mouth was kept open by hoops.” (James Teit, Salishan Tribes of the Western Plateaus,” 1930, p. 222)

Temporary containers made for short-term use were not often collected for museums or preserved in families. About 1932 a young Sinixt woman made a basket for a berry-picking expedition. Folded and stitched from a length of unprocessed bark, it was preserved in her family for 90 years, and came to light in 2023.

Sinixt woman with bark basket
Cindy Marchand in 2023 with the 1932 basket.
Interior of rough bark basket
Like birch bark baskets, rough bark baskets were strengthened at the rim by a hoop sewn to the basket wall.
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We are an Indigenous nation of the Colville Confederated Tribes and an Aboriginal People of Canada. We have rights in both countries.

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