Woven Lives
by Jerome Evans
Louisa Keyser, better known as Dat-so-la-lee, is considered one of the two or three greatest Native American basket weavers of all time. Her finest works, large coiled baskets made of willow, bracken fern root, and redbud, are now valued at upwards of half a million dollars each.
She was born into the Washoe tribe sometime between 1825 and 1850,—probably nearer the latter date—and died in Carson City in 1925. During her lifetime, she made 120 documented major baskets, 62 documented miniatures, and an unknown number of other works. Ten of her major works are in the collection of the Nevada Historical Society and ten are in the Nevada State Museum collection in Carson City. Others are held by the Peabody Museum at Yale, the Smithsonian Institution, several other major museums, and a few fortunate private collectors.
Louisa Keyser was one of a number of extraordinary Washoe basket weavers making their art during the early decades of the twentieth century, including Scees Bryant, Maggie Mayo James, Sarah Mayo, Tillie Snooks, Jennie Shaw, Lena Dick and Tootsie Dick. That Louisa became the best known among these great weavers is a consequence not only of her exceptional talent but the circumstances in which she worked.
In 1895, Louisa became employed as a housekeeper for Abram and Amy Cohn of Carson City. A few years earlier, Abe had inherited a clothing shop there known as the Emporium. Probably at Amy's insistence, he had begun adding a few Indian "curios" to the inventory, including baskets. Very soon, the Emporium became known for its Native American baskets, at a time when they were becoming increasingly popular on both coasts. In Southern California, collectors created "Indian rooms" to show off their baskets, weavings, beadwork and Craftsman furniture.
It is likely that Louisa was hired by the Cohns for her basket weaving as well as her housekeeping skills. By 1898 she was weaving baskets full time for the Emporium. Recognizing her talent, Abe provided her and her husband Charlie free room and board in a cottage next to the Cohns' house in exchange for her finest baskets. Amy, who was the marketing genius behind this enterprise, soon set about transforming Louisa into an "Indian princess" named Dat-so-la-lee who had been born before the coming of the white man. Amy also invented names for the designs on the baskets and stories to go along with them. She claimed that Dat-sola- lee had inherited the right to weave "the sacred mortuary degikup", when in fact, the degikup was not a traditional Washoe basket but an invention of Louisa's. She said that the designs on her beautiful baskets were "abstract... developed solely for their aesthetic value."
While Abe and Amy sold a great many baskets during this period and were largely responsible for the market for fine Great Basin baskets, they sold relatively few of Louisa's best works. Abe kept the asking price for her baskets very high—as high as $4,000 for the finest piece—apparently content to use them as an enticement for the sale of the work of other weavers.
No other Washoe basket weaver enjoyed—or put up with—such an arrangement. Several, most notably Scees Bryant and Tootsie Dick, sold many of their baskets through the Emporium, and others attracted patrons who became the principal collectors of their work and, therefore, major sources of their livelihood.
By the summer of 1906, Abe had begun renting a house in Tahoe City, not far from the very popular Tahoe Tavern, as a second outlet for his growing basket inventory. The house, which was on the Lakeshore, was called "The Bicose", the Washoe word for baby carrier. Here Amy and Louisa spent each summer, Louisa weaving and demonstrating her art and Amy selling baskets to the tourists arriving by train and boat.
We know from Amy's postcards written to friends and relatives that she often felt very lonely during the summers at Tahoe City, away from Abe. It is doubtful that she thought of Louisa as an acceptable companion, for both Amy and Abe were known to make disparaging remarks about Louisa's appearance and character.
Louisa, on the other hand, seems to have thought well of Amy. As early as 1900 and continuing until Amy's death in 1919, Louisa wove a series of miniature baskets that she presented to Amy as gifts at Christmas and on other occasions. These miniatures, 62 in all, including two that were completed after Amy's death, are the subject of the extraordinary exhibit at the Gatekeeper's Museum in Tahoe City this summer. The exhibit features all 62 pieces, plus related objects including examples of Louisa's weaving materials and photographs of Louisa, Amy and Abe.
The collection, which has never before been exhibited, passed from Amy to Margaret Cohn, Abe's second wife (neither Amy nor Louisa had surviving children). A few years after Abe's death in 1934, Margaret closed the Carson store and moved to Berkeley. In the early 1940s, she sold all of the remaining baskets, including the miniatures, which went to the Alexander family, cattle ranchers in Napa County. The family held the collection until 1984 when it was sold intact to another private California collector. It is that collector who has so generously loaned the collection to the Gatekeeper's Museum for the exhibit.
Among the 62 works are 11 "three-rod" baskets, 17 "single-rod" baskets, numerous twined bowls, trays and seed-beaters, and 6 infant carriers. It is the three-rod baskets, and especially the nine three-rod degikup (gift baskets), that are the heart of this collection. These wonderful works are very like Louisa's major baskets in shape and design yet only an inch to three and one-half inches in height. They have stitch counts of 19 to 28 per inch, comparable, again, to her larger baskets, and the designs are perfectly spaced in her characteristic vertical arrangements of redbud and bracken fern.
Don't miss the chance to view this jewel of an exhibit, of which the Gatekeeper's Museum can be very proud.
"Woven Legacy: A Collection of Datso- la-lee Works, 1900-1921" is the first ever exhibit of the miniatures created by the seminal basketweaver of the Washoe Tribe. The 62-piece collection will be shown from May 1 through October 31 at the Gatekeeper's Museum in Tahoe City. The museum is open May 1—June 15 and in September from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Wed.—Sun., and open daily during the summer. Admission is $2 for seniors, $3 for other adults, $1 for children over five. Children five and under and museum members get in free. (530) 583-1762 or www.northtahoemuseums.org.