Thompson (Nlaka'pamux) Coiled Basket: Cedar-Root Bundles Whip-Stitched with Root Splints, Watertight (Teit, 1900)

"Most of these baskets are water-tight."

Dig the small trailing roots of the red cedar with a root-digger and cut off pieces about as thick as a finger. Bury them in the ground to keep them fresh until needed.

Take them out, peel or scrape them with a sharp stone or knife, and hang them up until dry enough to work. Split them into long strips by pushing the point of a deer-bone awl along them.

Keep the pieces that split evenly to the right width and thickness along their whole length for stitching. Tie the irregular, short or thin ones in bundles of about a dozen: these are the coil.

Start at the bottom (or stitch over thin pieces of wood for a flat base). Lay the coil round, one turn on top of the last, whip-stitching it with the long splints, over and under; with each stitch the awl splits part of the splint round the coil below. Add fresh pieces to keep the coil continuous and even.

From James Teit, *The Thompson Indians of British Columbia*, **Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Jesup North Pacific Expedition** vol. I part IV (1900), pp. 187-189 and Fig. 131 a (checked on the archive.org scan cihm_16242). The outside was often decorated by hooking in strips of glossy grass and bitter-cherry bark under the stitches (the bark buried in damp earth turns dark brown, then black); that ornament is not built here. Size and how to start the first coil are ours.