Somes Bar (near), Siskiyou County, California, United States, North America
Accession Date:
7 Dec 1967
Notes:
From card: "Tightly woven, flat bottomed basket decorated with 3 horizontal bands of black and yellow. Sides have triangular elements with apexes alternately up and down. See donors statement, with accession records."
In a memo dated November 22, 1967 in accession file, R. B. Woodbury states about baskets E409199 and E409200: "Mrs. Reisner says these baskets were made by her grandmother, about 1874, when she lived in the village of 'Kravramnik' on the Klamath River in northern California. Mrs. Reisner's maiden name was Torgerson, and she has tribal roll number 27009, in the enrollment of California Indians by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her mother, born Mae Halverson, born in Kravramnik in 1878, came from a Norwegian-Indian family dating back to the Gold Rush. Mrs. Reisner's grandmother, who made the baskets, was born in 1858 and made them about 1874, when she was about 16 years old. the grandmother's name was Mary Legion; she first married a man named Halverson, and later a man named West; she died at the age of 29. The tribal identification of these specimens must depend on the following details: 1) The village of Kravramnik where they were made is on the Klamath River, across from a village named 'Itom-ni-itok' and both near modern Somes Bar. Kroeber's map (BAE Bull. 78) puts this in Lower Karok country. 2) Mrs. Reisner is enrolled on the Pit River Indian rolls by the BIA...Although these baskets were made and worn as hats, Mrs. Reisner said she could remember them also being used to cook small amounts of acorn mush (after the meal had been ground fine and leached); the meal and water were placed in the basket, it was set in a small cavity in the ground and hot rocks put into it, the top covered with clean leaves and a layer of earth and it was left to cook. It was eaten, when cooled, out of the same dish."
A tintype photo of Mary Legion is in the collections of the National Anthropological Archives: SPC Oregon Seaboard Hupa SOA No # 01115800, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. The back of the photo has a label: "Mary Legion, 1858-1887, 1/2 Klamath, Married - Aslack Halverson 1877, Grandmother." Klamath probably indicates Klamath River Indians, not Oregon Klamath, based on the Somes Bar, California locality, which is Klamath River area (mainly Karok/Karuk.) Also, donor said that her grandmother lived in the village of "Kravramnik" on the Klamath River in northern California. It is possible that this is the Karuk town sometimes called Xavara'mnik/Xavaramnik?? Complicating factor is that donor wrote about her mother Eleanor M. Halverson's marriage to Theodore Christford Torgerson. Eleanor was the daughter of Mary Legion and Aslack Halverson. See Reisner, Mae Olive T. "The Courtship of Eleanor and Theodore." The Siskiyou Pioneer. 2nd ed., Yreka, Siskiyou County Historical Society, 1984, pp. 97-101. See also https://www.ijpr.org/post/it-was-young-man-saves-klamath-river-girl-matched-suitor#stream/0 . In this publication she indicates her mother had Yurok heritage.
Illus. Fig. 9, p. 12 in Johnson, Ron, Coleen Kelley Marks, and Susie Van Kirk. 2012. Photographs of native americans of northwest california. Eureka: Trinidad Museum and Times Printing. Identified there as "Woman's ceremonial cap ... is an accomplished piece of weaving, since it is at the pinnacle of cap types with black fern and yellow porcupine quills. The pattern is a variation on the snake nose pattern with yellow quill bars and five-fingered fern triangles along the edges of the triangular pattern."
