Antique Papago Basket, Willow and Devils Claw

ca. 1900

 5.125" H x 16.375" D 

Tightly Hand Coiled with Golden Tan Willow Background and Darker Devils Claw Geometric Design

In Very Good Condition with Light Wear on the Rim

Early Papago baskets, like their neighbors Pima baskets, are woven of Willow and Devilsclaw.  In the 1930s, the Papago began weaving with Yucca instead which is far easier to process and weave with, greatly increasing their volumn to satisfy the tourist market. The yucca baskets, being the most common Southwestern basket today,  are considered less refined and as they are fairly common, are less valuable on the collectors market than these early willow field baskets.  The Papago baskets tend to have a square knot start, the Pima a simple round start, and the Papago use, in general, larger black centers than the Pima.   

This is a traditional coiled basket made by the Tohono O’odham people (formerly called Papago by outsiders), a Native American tribe whose reservation and traditional lands are primarily in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico.