The Burden-Basket— Coast Pomo, Plate 475
Edward Sheriff Curtis American
Not on view
The artist mistakenly identified his subject, Cecilia Joaquin, as being from the coast. In reality, she was a member of inland Mendocino County’s Hopland Rancheria and the mother of Frances, whose portrait hangs nearby. Frances recalled how ethnographer John Hudson, spouse of artist Grace Carpenter Hudson, brought Curtis to the fields where the Joaquin family was picking hops in 1923. There Curtis took a series of pictures of Frances and her mother.
Cecilia wears a "carrying" or "burden" basket in a net suspended from a forehead strap, while holding the handle of a basketry seed beater. Curtis borrowed these older, "traditional" objects—the basket, the seed beater, and the carrying net—from the Hudsons’ collection of Pomo artifacts to "dress up" his subjects so that they looked more traditional and less modern.
—Sherrie Smith-Ferri (Dry Creek Pomo/Bodega Miwok)
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