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Trail of the Missing Basket [Washoe] (4 pages)
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Page: of 4
The Trail of the Missing Basket
by
Warren L. d’ Azevedo
and
Thomas Kavanagh
n March 28, 1914, a group of persons describing themselves as “representing the surviving
members of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada with head©
quarters at Carson City” sent a petition and a gift
to the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States Government in which they “humbly
beg to send by Express to your Honorable Body an
Indian Basket descriptive of the early history of
Nevada.”
The petition continues, in part, as follows:
“The basket is a special curio worked for this
occasion by Sarah Jim, youngest of two surviving
daughters of Chief Jim who died in the year 1865,
and it took her some two years or more to complete
the task. It describes her father Captain Jim (or
James) turning over the guns and ammunition of his
tribe of Washoes to the white settlers in Nevada,
that they might be successful in the war of 1865....
“The Inscription worked on the basket reads:
NEVADA AND CALIFORNIA.
CAPTAIN JAMES, 1ST CHIEF OF
WASHOE TRIBE
SARAH, I AM HIS DAUGHTER
THIS BASKET IS A SPECIAL CURIO
1913
12
“Had Captain Jim been unfriendly . . . instead
of becoming a friend of Governor Nye, Governor
of the State of Nevada at that time, the history of
Nevada would have been radically changed. _
“The Committee presenting this memento desires that it be kept at the White House as a lasting
token of the friendship of the Washoe Tribe towards
the whites, and as a reminder of a tribe now becoming rapidly extinct... .
“About twenty odd years ago we were allotted
‘land’ some twenty-five miles south of Carson, which
upon investigation turned out to be rocky and mountainous—it is barren, desolate in the extreme, and
of such character that it cannot be cultivated.
“What little timber there was on this allotted
land was claimed by whites. Whenever Indians tried
to make use of it, they (the whites) stating they had
bought it from the government. .. .
“What have we now—a tent, or hut built of tin
cans or other refuse of the whites in Carson Valley,
to which our sons and daughters return when they
leave school, and there is no environment for their
betterment; in fact being able to read and write,
they are dissatisfied with their conditions, and the
result nine times out of ten is that they seek company which tends toward their destruction. A home
for each family with a parcel of ground to cultivate,
would remedy this very largely, something which is
utterly impossible on the ground now allotted us.
“In this connection permit us to say that we feel
we should receive better treatment from your honorable body, than at present, in view of past friendliness and aid at such a critical time as in 1865.
Other tribes here in Nevada who were enemies of
the whites at that time, are today treated with far
The Indian Historian, Summer, 1974