Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1993–1994
Shoshone Baskets:
Evelyn Pete and Edna Mike
Evelyn Pete likes to sit on the floor to clean willows
and weave them into baskets, the old way. She and
her sisters still speak the Shoshone language when they
are together, and she starts her days with a traditional
prayer. “But nowadays people don’t do them things,”
she laments. “They say it’s old stuff, they said that’s old.
No, it’s not. It still works…but they don’t believe it.”
Evelyn was born on the old Blackeye Ranch before
the establishment of the Duckwater Reservation in eastern
Nevada, and she still keeps a house on the reservation,
even though she works during the week on the
Goshute Reservation in Utah. She was raised with traditional
Shoshone practices, foods, stories and crafts, and
learned to make baskets from her mother. Cradleboards,
winnowing trays, cone baskets and round baskets were all
still used in her youth, but in a very short time the skills
needed to make them have faded drastically.
Evelyn’s sister Edna Mike, only a few years younger,
never learned to make baskets, although she saw her
mother gathering willows and weaving. Working with
Evelyn, Edna has learned where to look for good willows,
and how to test them to know if they will work
for basket making. Unlike residents of more developed
areas, the Duckwater basket makers have easy access to
plenty of healthy willows because they live in such a
remote area. Usually the sisters go for willows to the
old Blackeye Ranch where they were born. Edna also
had to learn how to scrape the bark off of the fresh willows,
and to perfect the difficult technique of splitting
them into three even parts to make threads for weaving
baskets. All this before even beginning to make a basket.
To add to her difficulties, Edna decided to make a
round basket first, one of the more complicated forms
of traditional basketry, and managed to finish it during
the apprenticeship with her sister.
Evelyn and Edna’s older sister Lilly Sanchez is also
an accomplished basket maker, so the family heritage
has been strengthened even further with Edna’s entry
into the tradition. And Lilly has also been teaching her
daughter the art through another apprenticeship, insuring
the continuation of the Blackeye Family tradition to
a new generation.
Edna Mike cleaning a willow.
Evelyn Pete splitting willows.
29