ANCIENT AMERICA - The Basket Weavers
For thousands of years the people of America drifted about from here to there, wherever food could be found. They lived on roots and berries as well as the animals they hunted and the fish they caught.
Slowly they began to gather into tribes for success in hunting as well as protection from other enemies, be it fierce animals or hungry men.
As the tribes grew the strongest and most warlike people seized the best hunting grounds and the most comfortable dwelling places.
As the centuries passed the tribes spread throughout the continent, and sometime before the year 15,000 B.C., the earliest bands reached the high country of Mexico. It was there that agriculture was first discovered, when some observant tribesman noticed that some seeds that had been tossed out near their shelters had sprouted and produced more seeds.
For a time, only the tribesmen of the Mexican highlands knew about agriculture, while far to the north in what is the American Painted Desert, peaceful people continued to live as they had for centuries. There under the burning skies which seldom rained, they managed to find enough food to satisfy them. Other wandering tribes from the northern plateaus spurned this uninviting land, and the desert dwellers were left in peace to hunt for squirrel, rabbit, deer, wild berries and a few tender plants when the skies did favor them with a little rainfall. For clothing they wore the skins of the animals they caught but for shelter they had only a few trees or projecting rocks.
After many centuries of this simple but strenuous way of life, some strange tribes arrived bringing into the Southwest the seeds of a cultivated plant that they had developed from a wild one. This was corn, or maize. The growing of maize brought a huge change in the lifestyle of these Southwestern people.
Now that they had learned to plant and grow the seed, they found it necessary to stay nearby to protect it from the hungry wild animals while it was growing and from the raids of other hungry and strange tribes after it had ripened. Thus it came about that the wandering tribes settled down into this land of painted deserts and developed a better way of living.
They were to become known as The Basket Weavers, because they learned to make baskets for everything, from pots and pans, baskets lined with clay and ashes for carrying water, baskets to use as storage bins, even to baskets for carrying their babies.
These baskets were made from the yucca plant fibers or wooden splinters coiled and bound together with yucca fiber cords. Often they painted them black in designs of whirls or zigzags.
Now, as The Basket Weavers lived continuously beside their fields of corn, the larger animals left the region. Skins large enough for coverings no longer existed, so a need soon became the mother of invention. They thought up a way to make a new kind of blanket. As the smaller animals were caught, their hides were cut into strips and placed in a huge basket-tray until there were enough for a blanket. Then the women set to tearing apart yucca leaves. When that was done the furry strips were twisted around the yucca fiber so that the hair stood out in little swirls.
After all the strips had been twisted, two stakes were set in the ground six or eight feet apart. The men took the heavy fur ropes and wound them one above the other, evenly, back and forth around the two stakes. When all of the ropes had been woven, the strips were fastened together with twined threads of yucca cord. When the piece was at last removed from the frame, they had a fine, warm, fur blanket.
Men in America had for the first time used their wits to meet the necessities of life with things thought out and planned rather than merely seizing what they wanted by brute force from other beings.
