Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo

Upon its completion in 1878, Jules Tavernier’s Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California was hailed in a San Francisco news-paper as “by far the most remarkable picture ever painted on the Pacific Coast.” The French-born artist’s painting now returns to California for the first time in more than 140 years as a central focus of this presentation of his work. The current exhibition puts forth a new interpretation of his career masterwork and his other compositions of the western United States by offering a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, including those of Pomo cultural leaders and curators.

In the dramatic scene of the painting, Tavernier depicts a ceremonial dance of the Elem Pomo in an underground roundhouse at Clear Lake (Xa’btin), California. Capturing a historical moment, it chronicles a cultural interaction on November 22, 1875, between California Indians in their homelands and outsiders associated with the Sulphur Bank Quicksilver Mining Company operating on Elem ancestral lands. In the ensuing years, the mine would cause widespread mercury contamination of the lake, with grave and long-lasting repercussions for the Elem community.

When Tavernier arrived in California, in 1874, the Pomo peoples had for decades suffered the consequences of white settlement, including genocidal violence, disease, land theft, forced relocation, environmental degradation, and cultural transformation. Yet in the face of colonialism, Pomo basket weavers adapted to economic and social change, enabling this core aspect of Pomo culture to survive. Presented alongside Tavernier’s works are historic and contemporary Pomo baskets and regalia pieces that celebrate the enduring artistry and resiliency of the Pomo artists and cultural bearers over several generations and highlight their continued cultural presence in their homelands today.

Exhibition Organization

Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo is organized in partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Co-curated by Elizabeth Kornhauser, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Shannon Vittoria, Senior Research Associate, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in partnership with Christina Hellmich, Curator in Charge, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. At the de Young, the exhibition is co-presented with Elem Pomo cultural leader and regalia maker Robert Geary; Dry Creek Pomo / Bodega Miwok scholar Sherrie Smith-Ferri, PhD; and Eastern Pomo artist and curator Meyo Marrufo; with additional contributions from Arthur Amiotte, Oglala Lakota artist and historian; Dorene Red Cloud (Oglala Lakota), Associate Curator of Native American Art at Eiteljorg Museum; and Healoha Johnston, Curator of Asian Pacific American Women’s Cultural History at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha), PhD, Associate Curator of Native American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is an adviser to the project.

Narrated by Elem Pomo cultural leader and regalia maker Robert Joseph Geary, Dry Creek Pomo scholar Sherrie Smith-Ferri, and Eastern Pomo artist and curator Meyo Marrufo, the film introduces Clear Lake (Xa’btin) and the Elem roundhouse. Highlighting the importance of the landscape and natural materials in Pomo basketry, it presents the environmental and cultural impact of mining and land loss as well as the continuum of Pomo ceremony at the site.

The maker of this stately basket constructed it almost entirely by means of close lattice-twining, a complicated and technically challenging weaving technique that produces a vessel that is quite strong yet also lightweight. It would hold a large quantity of foodstuffs, such as acorns, safe and dry inside the home. Often referred to as “dowry baskets,” such pieces were part of the ritual exchange of gifts that formalized a marriage. The bride’s mother gave this type of basket to the groom and his family.

This piece has a prominent dau, or deliberate break in the pattern, that is a characteristic marker of Pomo basketry. This provided the spirit of the basket with an opening to enter or exit. To not include one would bring misfortune or ill health to the weaver.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Acorn mush—a staple of the Pomo peoples’ diet—was cooked in baskets like this. Fist-sized rocks were heated until they were glowing hot and then dropped into a basket filled with ground meal and water. To keep the rocks from burning the vessel, the mixture was then stirred continuously until it boiled and thickened. This basket, however, was much more than a cooking pot. Larger than needed for a single household’s use, it would have been given pride of place at important social occasions.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Born in France, Jules Tavernier (1844–1889) trained as an artist and exhibited his paintings at the Paris Salon in the 1860s. He arrived in New York in August 1871, initially showcasing his skills as an illustrator with scenes of daily life and quintessential American landscapes. Following the opening of the Transcontinental Railroad, in 1869, the American public clamored for images of the West. Tavernier’s talent was recognized by Harper’s Weekly, which hired him, along with fellow French artist Paul Frenzeny, to travel across the country and make a “pictorial record” of what they saw, providing the magazine’s readers with illustrations such as the one on view nearby.

The men filled their sketchbooks with representations of the events and encounters they witnessed—including the impacts of rapid expansion of white settlement and the US government’s forced relocation of Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands to reservations. Tavernier sought out direct encounters with Native Americans, witnessing the Sun Dance ceremony and meeting Chief Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, a lieutenant headman of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Tavernier completed at least thirty paintings of Indigenous peoples over the course of his eighteen-year career, portraying the grandeur of their ceremonies and gatherings he witnessed and the awe-inspiring beauty of the contested landscapes.

—Christina Hellmich, Elizabeth Kornhauser, and Shannon Vittoria

Established in August 1873, Red Cloud’s agency was located on the Platte River in what was then called Wyoming Territory, near present-day Crawford, Nebraska. Agencies preceded reservations; the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty established approximately sixty million contiguous acres in western South Dakota, northern Nebraska, and eastern Wyoming for the Lakota. Red Cloud, the leader of the Ité Šíca (Bad Face) band of the Oglala, waged a successful military campaign against the United States from 1866 to 1868 in response to European immigrants trespassing on Lakota homelands. He was one of the few Native Americans to win a war with the United States, and his fame resulted in many visitors who wanted to meet and spend time with him.

—Dorene Red Cloud

In May 1874, under the escort of an armed US cavalry unit, Jules Tavernier began a monthlong journey to the government-run Red Cloud Agency on the Platte River, downstream from Fort Laramie, Wyoming. The artist wrote to his mother, “I will be crossing one of the wildest areas around here, no artist has ever been. . . . I will meet [Red Cloud], one of the most important Indian Chiefs. . . .” He captured the provisional nature of the camp in a series of sketches, including this work. It is dedicated to “my little friend Woolworth,” referring to the camp physician shown seated at his desk and surrounded by medicine bottles, a buffalo hide, and a human skull.

—Elizabeth Kornhauser

Jules Tavernier arrived at Camp Robinson, Nebraska, in time to witness the annual Sun Dance, a weeklong ceremony of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, which required special permission from Native leaders. He chose to illustrate a sensationalized scene for Harper’s Weekly that took place, as reported in the magazine, “on the last day of the ceremonies, when the young warriors . . . undergo various self-inflicted tortures for the purpose of proving their powers of endurance.”

—Elizabeth Kornhauser

The Sun Dance ceremony was an expression of faith and a solemn occasion. Tavernier’s depiction is in the genre of published journalism illustrations of this period that sensa-tionalized what was perceived to be the “savagery” of the Western tribes, influencing public opinion about how the “Indian problem out West” should be dealt with. Tavernier did treat many of the subjects in the scene with historical accuracy, including the tribal members wearing both Indigenous and European attire, but he took artistic license with others, conflating events that occurred over several days into this last day of a complex and episodic drama.

—Arthur Amiotte

Jules Tavernier based this work on his firsthand experience of the events leading up to the Sun Dance ceremony in June 1874. Working several years later in his studio, he consulted his field sketches and collection of Indigenous attire, and set the scene with a backdrop of the Crow Buttes in Nebraska. Members of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes arrive in a seemingly endless stream for the weeklong ceremony. Addressing the group of women at left is the Oglala lieutenant headman Sitting Bull, of the Southern Lakota. The structure at right, marked by the leader’s headpiece and shield hanging on a pole, may belong to Chief Red Cloud. The artist quickly found a buyer for this highly detailed painting, but he never fully completed it, leaving areas unfinished.

—Arthur Amiotte and Elizabeth Kornhauser

According to the Honolulu newspaper Daily Pacific Commercial Advertiser, this is the last painting Jules Tavernier completed. Executed in his studio in Hilo, Hawai‘i, shortly before his untimely death, it was based on earlier sketches and “aided by memory.”

—Elizabeth Kornhauser

By the summer of 1874, Jules Tavernier was settled in San Francisco and soon became one of its leading artists. He brought his adventurous spirit to the city and immersed himself in San Francisco’s art scene, garnering commissions from prominent patrons and the interest of the local press, which reported on his work and exuberant lifestyle. He formed the Artists’ Union and was an early member of the Bohemian Club and San Francisco Art Association, as well as a founder and the first president of the San Francisco Palette Club. Drawing from his academic training, Tavernier adopted the use of vertical-format canvases to paint the towering trees of the Northern California landscape and is credited with introducing pastel technique to San Francisco.

Throughout his career, Tavernier sought dramatic and unique landscapes that made his work distinctive from that of other artists and appealing to buyers. In 1876, inspired by the region’s atmospheric coastal views, he built a studio in Monterey, California, and helped to establish the Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, which drew many artists and writers to the area. During his time in California, Tavernier avoided painting grand vistas and offered viewers more intimate scenes, often with figures, in vividly lit landscapes, leading the San Francisco Chronicle to report that “there is a little of the natural with a good deal of the fantastical in his pictures.”

—Christina Hellmich, Elizabeth Kornhauser, and Shannon Vittoria

Many of Jules Tavernier’s paintings directly address inter-cultural encounters, often violent, between Indigenous peoples and white settlers. In this case, the artist chose to celebrate the US centennial of 1876 with a scene from the earlier gold rush era, which had disrupted, in devastating ways, the lives of Native Californians. The painting’s narrow vertical format and setting sun enhance the drama of the episode as a wagon train makes its way through a narrow gorge in the mountains toward armed men in the foreground.

—Shannon Vittoria

Following his arrival in San Francisco in July 1874, Jules Tavernier adapted a distinctive vertical format for his scenes of redwood forests that emphasized the full height of the trees, which are emblematic of Northern California. Around the Campfire (Encampment in the Redwoods) includes a self-portrait of Tavernier near a tent in the wilderness, away from his studio in the city, celebrating his rugged bohemian lifestyle. He and his fellow artists, including Paul Frenzeny, are framed by a fallen giant redwood. Their dog Judy, who had accompanied them on their journey across the country to the West Coast, sits nearby.

—Elizabeth Kornhauser

Jules Tavernier, who had painted in the famed artist colonies near the French village of Barbizon, was drawn to the Monterey Peninsula on the Pacific coast—an area that came to be known as a “veritable Fontainebleau,” after the forest near Barbizon. In this enigmatic self-portrait, the artist appears turning from his plein air oil study to contemplate a female muse who coalesces in the smoke from the campfire. A bottle of champagne stands at the ready. Anthropomorphic forms, including Native American figures, appear in the surrounding landscape and sky. The skull serves as a reminder of his mortality.

—Elizabeth Kornhauser

Yosemite (Forest Fire in Moonlit Landscape) is one of Jules Tavernier’s finest works in pastel, a medium he experi-mented with throughout the 1880s, prompting one San Francisco critic to proclaim him the leader of the city’s “pastel craze.” Painted after his 1881 trip to Yosemite Valley, this work reveals the artist’s ongoing fascination with the sublime effects of nature, as seen in this dramatic evening scene illuminated only by the moon above and a forest fire below. In order to render the distinctive qualities of the Northern California landscape, Tavernier adopted an elongated vertical format to capture the exceptional height of Yosemite’s redwood trees.

—Shannon Vittoria

In the 1850s and 1860s, Yosemite Valley was the primary destination for landscape painters and photographers in California. Although the site was home to and cared for by Indigenous peoples, early white settlers often speciously described it as America’s “Eden”—a place of pristine, untouched wilderness. Carleton E. Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite in 1861, producing one hundred stereo views and thirty mammoth plates (unusually large glass negatives), including this one. To adequately capture the grandeur of the 225-foot Sequoia tree, he adopted a vertical format and included four figures at its base for scale. Prints from his mammoth plates were subsequently exhibited at the Goupil Gallery in New York, where they introduced Easterners in the United States to the magnificence of Yosemite. In 1867, his photographs of Yosemite Valley gained critical acclaim at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

—Shannon Vittoria

When Jules Tavernier arrived in San Francisco in 1874, Yosemite was the landscape most closely associated with California. Although he befriended many of the artists who popularized the valley in their paintings and photographs, including Thomas Hill, William Keith, and Eadweard Muybridge, Tavernier did not visit the site until 1881. That trip inspired canvases such as this one, in which he, like Carleton E. Watkins before him (see photograph at left), vertically arranged the composition to emphasize the height of the redwood trees and the grandeur of the granite peaks. Often compelled to make paintings of Yosemite out of financial need, the artist exclaimed to his wife that the valley “shows everything and tells nothing! It drives me mad to work on it!” He preferred to paint what were then lesser-known landscapes in Northern California, such as those in Monterey, Marin, and Napa Counties.

—Shannon Vittoria

In 1872 Eadweard Muybridge spent six months photographing Yosemite with a mammoth-plate camera that accommodated large glass negatives. He created stunning views intended to rival in both size and aesthetic quality Carleton E. Watkins’s earlier images, an example of which is on view nearby. In advance of his trip, Muybridge issued a prospectus to promote the series, offering forty prints for one hundred dollars to subscribers, among them the artist Albert Bierstadt and Jules Tavernier’s later patron Tiburcio Parrott y Ochoa. The final fifty-three-page catalogue was published in 1873, and its popularity may have encouraged Tavernier—who later collaborated with Muybridge on the development of the zoopraxiscope—to visit and paint the valley.

—Shannon Vittoria

Jules Tavernier’s painting depicts the mfom Xe, or “people dance,” a newer ceremony that was introduced to our community in the post-contact period by a prophet from a neighboring village northeast of Elem. The world-renewal process that was prophesied, and is the subject of the dance, needed to be practiced immediately because the oomthimfo (Native people) were dying in record numbers from diseases brought by white settlers. This prophecy also came with instructions for the new ceremonial Xe-xwan (roundhouse), which, along with the mfom Xe dance, would serve to protect both the people and the land. All members of the village could partake in this dance; children and adults danced together to create a power that would ensure our existence.

Tavernier’s likeness of the ceremonial Xe-xwan is impressive in terms of his abilityto capture the grandeur and beauty of the interior. The stories from our elders about how these structures were made, passed down from generation to generation, ring true throughout the work. The Elem Xe-xwan still exists today, as do the mfom Xe dance and the Elemfo (Elem people). Nearly 150 years after Tavernier painted this scene, we continue to reside at the same location and have sustained our ceremonial and cultural practices.

—Robert Joseph Geary

Compelled by his French training to execute preliminary drawings for any grand commission, Jules Tavernier made numerous trips to Clear Lake (Xa’btin) to examine the architecture of the roundhouse, make life portraits of the Elem Pomo, and witness a ceremony firsthand. Of the dozens of oil sketches he is known to have made, this is the only one that has come to light: a study for the overall composition, made in his studio, that establishes the interior scene and the positions of the figures. An infrared reflectography examination has revealed extensive under-drawing. The study helps to establish Tavernier’s many compositional changes, revealing his thought process in developing the final composition.

—Elizabeth Kornhauser

This young woman is Frances Joaquin (later Frances Jack) from the Hopland Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians. She is richly adorned with multiple strands of clamshell disk beads (hooya) and magnesite cylinders (po’h) similar to those on view nearby. The strands of lustrous round white clamshell disks were a type of wearable currency often referred to as “Indian silver.” Magnesite, a mineral found near Clear Lake (Xa’btin), is naturally cream colored, but when heated it transforms into shades of ocher. Specially trained Pomo men “cooked” the magnesite and then fashioned the salmon-colored mineral into long cylinders—highly valued “Indian gold.” Frances also models an exquisite pair of ear sticks (ya’ xman xai). Worn by a woman during an important occasion, such as the ceremonial dance pictured by Jules Tavernier, these ear sticks would be among the treasures of a wealthy family.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Jules Tavernier’s most important commission came from Tiburcio Parrott y Ochoa, San Francisco’s leading banker. During an 1876 visit from his Parisian business partner, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and the baron’s traveling companion Count Gabriel Louis de Turenne, Parrott y Ochoa was able to obtain entry to a ceremonial dance of the Elem Pomo known as the mfom Xe, or “people dance,” in an underground roundhouse at Clear Lake (Xa’btin).

—Elizabeth Kornhauser

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 the artist Edward Sheriff 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 (be’ki) in a net suspended from a forehead strap while also holding the handle of a basketry seed beater (tsu’ba dala). 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 less modern.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Learn more about Pomo carrying baskets.

Kono Geary, the artist’s son, wears a ceremonial headpiece paired with a ba’qotheth xnoo, or headband made from the red-shafted flicker (a historical example is on view nearby), and a kisil, or feathered condor cape.

—Robert Joseph Geary

Made by master artist William Ralganal Benson, these “earrings” are similar in style to those worn by a woman dancing in Jules Tavernier’s painting Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878), as well as those worn by Frances Joaquin in the photograph by Edward Sheriff Curtis on view to the right. The ear sticks (ya’ xman xai) demonstrate Benson’s exceptional incising, featherworking, and basket-weaving skills. The round crimson disks, edged with curling black quail topknots, are really miniature three-rod coiled red-feathered basketry plaques. It is unusual for a Pomo man to create fine decorated baskets. These have typically been the domain of women, while men have traditionally fashioned the larger, rougher and more plain baskets used for hunting birds and catching fish.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Made for contemporary dancers, this ceremonial headpiece, as well as the men’s headpiece included in this exhibition, is similar in form and style to those worn by dancers in the 1870s. Its contemporary usage highlights the continuum of Elem Pomo culture.

—Robert Joseph Geary

Several of the women dancing in Jules Tavernier’s painting Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878) are wearing this type of headdress, which the artist shows pushed up high on their foreheads, creating a halo effect. In reality, such headdresses are meant to be worn down low on the forehead, where the protruding beaded orange flicker quill squares, or “flags,” dangle in front of the wearer’s eyes.

—Robert Joseph Geary

In Jules Tavernier’s painting Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878), the two central male dancers are depicted wearing ba’qotheth xnoo, or headbands made from the red-shafted flicker, while blowing into bird-bone whistles, known as mpoo in Xaistnoo (Southeastern Pomo).

—Robert Joseph Geary

Old-style Pomo feather dance capes, like this, were typically tied under the arms of a male dancer and hung down his back. They swayed rhythmically with his movements or were “flicked up” by the dancer for dramatic emphasis. The two central male dancers in Jules Tavernier’s Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878) sport short, wispy versions of this magnificent piece of regalia.

—Robert Joseph Geary

A basket comparable to this one appears near the bottom center edge of Jules Tavernier’s Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878). Although it would not have been present during the mfom Xe dance, it would have played a part in the feasting afterward. These decorative coiled trays were used to serve food at such community celebrations. Their Native name can be translated as a “guest’s platter.” In contemporary life, the equivalent would be a tray made of silver or china.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

A similar basket sits at the bottom left of Jules Tavernier’s Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878) canvas, likely added for visual interest or as a reference to the common association of Pomo peoples with their basketry. In reality, such an object would not be present in the roundhouse. Instead, women used these finely made bell-shaped baskets in tandem with a woven spoon-shaped seed beater (tsu’ba dala), like the one shown here, to harvest and carry home mounds of ripe edible grains from native grasses and annuals.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

The natural fertility of Pomo peoples’ homelands—largely a product of their astute environmental management—provided a settled and satisfying life. They fished rivers teeming with salmon, hunted large flocks of game birds, and harvested a wealth of native plant foods. Baskets were the main tools of life: they were used to catch, gather, store, winnow, sift, cook, and serve these foodstuffs. In addition, baskets were central to individual and community events, serving as everything from a baby’s cradle to a part of ritualized marriage exchanges or celebrations of seasonal abundance.

However, Pomo life changed dramatically with the coming of non-Native people. Native communities struggled to survive the loss of their homelands, scores of deaths from epidemic diseases, and cultural disruption on a massive scale. As older ways of life became impossible to carry on, Pomo peoples increasingly turned to wage labor for their livelihood. Baskets became a good that Native weavers sold to non-Native collectors, rather than something that they themselves used. The objects were transformed into fine art pieces, which brought their makers needed money and were cherished by buyers for their consummate crafts-manship. Thus, baskets have come to embody the resilience of Pomo peoples and to underscore their ability to adapt to wrenching social change and to create beauty during ugly times.

There are two main ways to make a basket: twining and coiling. A twined basket is constructed by interlacing supple strands between vertical foundation rods. In contrast, a coiled piece is created by wrapping fibers around a horizontal foundation. Pomo weavers employed eight different twining strategies and two methods of coiling—an unparalleled diversity of weaving techniques to create a wealth of baskets.

My grandmother Lucy Lozinto Smith put it best. She, her parents, their siblings, and our ancestors stretching back for millennia all wove baskets. “We were,” she assured me, “the best basketmakers in the world.”

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Nets like this cradled a carrying basket and terminated in a woven strap. A woman out harvesting seeds, acorns, or other nuts would take their bounty home by cradling their carrying basket in the net and suspending it from the strap placed around their forehead or front shoulders. This left the weighty basket on their back, much like contemporary backpacks.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Born in Potter Valley and raised in Ukiah, California, Grace Carpenter Hudson was the daughter of Aurelius and Helen Carpenter, who were among the earliest white settlers in the region. After a period of study at the California School of Design (later the San Francisco Art Institute), she married ethnologist John Hudson, who encouraged her to paint works featuring local Pomo peoples. In this posthumous portrait of renowned Yokayo weaver Mary Pinto (ca. 1835–1906), Hudson depicted her sitter coiling a basket tray. Pinto belonged to a generation of Pomo weavers who practiced both coiling and twining. She taught these techniques to her daughter, Joseppa Pinto Dick, who also achieved widespread recognition for her work, notably for her miniature baskets (examples of which are on view in the exhibition).

—Shannon Vittoria

More than one hundred and fifty years ago, a Pomo woman made this delicate bowl as a gift for Donnah Mewhinney, an early white settler in Potter Valley who had a reputation for generosity toward her Native neighbors. Mewhinney eventually gave the basket to her sister, Grace Carpenter Hudson’s maternal grandmother. She, in turn, passed it on to Hudson’s mother, Helen Carpenter, who left it to Hudson, who then willed it to her nephew. Its pristine condition indicates that the family prized it.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Often labeled a “sifter” in the mistaken belief that women separated the coarse from the fine by shaking matter through this tray’s meshes, this object is in fact more similar to a colander. Its openings allow water to drain from wet foods, like seaweed, or enable air to circulate, preventing stored foods from becoming moldy. Although modest looking, such baskets are technically complex, requiring the weaver to twine additional horizontal warps at right angles to vertical foundation rods.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

The shores of Clear Lake (Xa’btin) are lined with tall tule plants, which were (and still are) used extensively by Pomo peoples. They constructed boats and thatched houses with tule bundles, ate from tule mats, wore tule clothing, diapered babies with shredded tule, and fashioned tule toys for children. Containers like this were woven quickly from nearby growing tule to hold a variety of objects. This basket carried baked clay balls used to hunt waterfowl. Men paddled out on the lake in boats, and when they were close to the birds, they used a tule sling, such as the contemporary one nearby, to launch these deadly missiles.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Crimson plaques like this were valued both for their plush beauty and for the effort involved in collecting the necessary feathers and fashioning the clamshell beads (hooya) and gleaming abalone (wiltul) pendants that adorn them. Also treasured for their spiritual significance, they were filled with balls of ground seed meal and hung from poles during seasonal community celebrations. Mary Posh worked for eleven months on this basket that required feathers from some five hundred birds.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Young women used coiled baskets of this distinctive shape to hold water for cleansing themselves when they were in seclusion during menstruation, particularly as part of the ceremony marking their coming of age. Babies were washed in similar coiled basketry basins during their naming ceremonies. It was important for these special baskets to be made by a woman with “good luck,” meaning one who had no history of illness.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

In earlier times, ornamented coiled baskets were made to be gifts, payment for services rendered, trade items, and objects of ritualized exchange during important life events. They incorporated materials both beautiful and valuable, such as ivory circles of clamshell disk beads (hooya)—a traditional form of currency—or scattered tufts of scarlet acorn woodpecker feathers. These baskets were a form of Native wealth, cherished for their beauty and craftsmanship, not their practicality.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Elongated oval-shaped coiled baskets are called “boat” baskets because of their resemblance to canoes. Traditionally, they were used to store special objects—valuables or items of power—that fit nicely into the long, narrow mouth. These included objects used by spiritual healers, such as cocoon rattles, whistles (mpoo), or feathers, as well as riches, such as clamshell disk bead necklaces (tho’asham) or strings of magnesite cylinders (po’h; examples are on view nearby).

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

This basket is an enigma. Its unusual layout features dark feathered design elements enclosed in diamonds and light elements floating inside black triangles. The motifs are not traditional; one figure resembles a Christian cross, while another form evokes a bird. The basket’s age and appearance suggest the design was born from the dreams of its maker. Like the mfom Xe dance painted by Jules Tavernier in Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878), it likely arose from individual visionary revelations.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

This piece is characteristic of made-for-sale baskets, whose primary purpose was to be visually attractive to non-Native buyers. These “art baskets” are an adaptation of earlier coiled and ornamented baskets that were given as gifts, but art baskets are generally smaller in size, finer in weave, and more elaborately decorated. This oval “boat” shape, a form particularly associated with Pomo basketry, was popular among basket collectors.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Pomo children formerly spent much of their infancy in a “cradle,” or baby basket. Traditionally, various objects were hung from the baby basket’s hoop to engage the baby’s attention, much like today’s crib mobiles. These dangling items often embodied the family’s wishes for the child’s future. Miniature coiled baskets were used as one such toy, often attached to girls’ cradles to inspire them to become talented weavers. A miniature basket cradle toy is shown attached to the hoop of the nearby doll’s baby basket. These tiny baskets became favorite novelty items among non-Native collectors as they competed to own “the smallest Indian basket in the world.” Native weavers profited from their sale because miniature baskets required fewer materials and less time to make.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Pomo weavers of past and present made small-scale versions of twined baskets used in everyday life, such as this petite carrying basket, doll-sized baby basket, and dainty diagonally twined bowl that mirrors the exhibition’s large feast bowl. They gifted these little baskets to their daughters, granddaughters, and nieces to use in playing house. These “toy baskets” allowed these girls to practice skills they would need to master when they were adults, such as diapering, wrapping, and carrying their own babies. Later, non-Native buyers would appreciate these cute curiosities and seek them out to add to their basket collections.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

The usual color scheme of Pomo basketry is reversed in this elegant “negative” basket in which the maker utilized dyed bulrush roots to create a black background. Negative baskets took longer to produce and required greater skill because bulrush roots are more difficult to source, harvest, and weave than the more commonly used golden-colored sedge roots.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

This basket, by Elem Pomo weaver Ethel Jamison Bogus, was created in the early twentieth century. By this time, life for Pomo peoples had changed dramatically. Native communities, like Elem, struggled to survive the loss of their homelands, the deaths of many from disease and violence, and immense cultural disruption. Pomo individuals, like Bogus, had no choice but to turn to wage labor for their livelihood. Weavers who had once made baskets for use within their own communities now made them for non-Native collectors, whose purchases provided weavers with the money necessary for them to survive and adapt to their altered circumstances.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Around the turn of the twentieth century, when the collecting and home display of Native American basketry became a national phenomenon, fully feathered Pomo baskets were particularly popular. The salability of these baskets, aptly termed “jewel” baskets by their non-Native admirers, encouraged weavers to develop artworks such as these. In contrast to the older and more traditional fully feathered red basket plaques, jewel baskets were typically smaller and more diverse in shape and often incorporated elaborate multicolored designs.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

This is a modern take on the older ear sticks (ya’ xman xai) also shown in this exhibition. Both feature basketry disks decorated with quail plumes and clamshell disk beads (hooya). Both were crafted by men as things of beauty to be worn by women for special events. In this case, the artist made the earrings for his daughter to wear at her wedding.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Clint McKay learned basketmaking from his “aunties,” master Pomo weavers Laura Fish Somersal (1892–1990) and Mabel McKay (1907–1993). Both women excelled at miniatures, and McKay continues to craft these small treasures today. Emphasizing the intergenerational nature of his basketry, McKay commented, “Those baskets and those roots that we use, those are the roots that bind me to my ancestors. . . . It is the very essence of who we are as Pomo.”

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Corine Pearce’s great-grandmother Mary Francisco was a supremely talented weaver whom Pearce never met. When young, however, Pearce dreamt her great-grandmother visited her. She told her that Pearce had Mary’s hands and that she, too, could weave baskets. Since then, Pearce has been harvesting basketry materials and has woven numerous Pomo baskets. She is best known for her cradle baskets, one of which is displayed in this exhibition. But she is equally skilled at twined and coiled basketry, as seen from these beaded baskets that Pearce recently made. Originating with the introduction of European glass trade beads, they are, essentially, another form of feathered basketry in which glass beads, rather than iridescent feathers, are woven into the basket’s fabric to create eye-catching designs.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Susan Billy was born in South Dakota, where her father, Ignatius Billy, worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She was named after her grandmother, master weaver Susie Billy, from Mendocino County. As a girl, Susan was fascinated by her grandmother’s baskets displayed around their home. Her father told her that one day Susan should go and visit her aunt, well-known Pomo weaver Elsie Allen, in California and that she could answer her questions. In her early twenties, Susan came to live in Mendocino County and spent the next decade learning Pomo basketry from her Aunt Elsie. This is the first feather basket Susan ever made, which, as customary, she gave away as a present. It seems fitting that it was gifted to her father.

—Sherrie Smith-Ferri

Jules Tavernier’s itinerant lifestyle and unpaid bills prompted him to flee San Francisco, traveling to Hawai‘i in search of new subjects for his art. Arriving in December of 1884, he declared it an “artist’s paradise.” By that time, volcanoes were already among the most iconic images associated with Hawai‘i. In fact, Tavernier’s first paintings of Kīlauea, an active volcano on Hawai‘i Island, were painted in San Francisco and based on photographs. In Hawai‘i, Tavernier painted a series depicting the volcanoes, emphasizing the commanding and magnificent forces of nature. His work attracted many patrons, including the monarch of the kingdom, King Kalākaua.

The success of these paintings launched what came to be known as the Volcano School and fueled tourism to the islands. Pele, a powerful female deity in Hawai‘i who embodies the many manifestations of volcanism, is revered as an environ-mental force capable of changing land formations. Well-circulated stories of Pele made Tavernier’s paintings all the more marketable to visitors. The artist died of a heart attack in his Honolulu studio at the age of forty-five.

—Healoha Johnston

Jules Tavernier’s volcano paintings display a fusion of European and American landscape traditions, characterized by scenic depictions of the natural world in turbulence or grandeur, often with an element of potential danger for heightened drama. Awe-inspiring natural phenomena rendered with established painterly conventions—such as the shadow-cast moon and gurgling lava here—implied divinity in nature. This artistic approach became associated with the quest to claim regions considered by settlers to be uncharted territories, despite the long-standing and continued presence of Indigenous peoples in those places. A volcano image like this operated in multiple ways: as a demonstration of the goddess Pele’s magnificence; as a form of scientific inquiry during a time of colonial imperialism; and as a type of American romantic landscape focused on westward expansion.

—Healoha Johnston

The prominent Waikīkī landmark Lē‘ahi, also known as Diamond Head, appears here in a shadowy haze beneath large purple clouds. The ocean’s silvery glow, the stillness of the scene, and the cloud-filtered sunrise hint that a storm has recently lifted. It is said that all dormant and extinct craters, such as Lē‘ahi, are the former homes of the powerful female deity Pele, before she established a continual presence at Halema‘uma‘u, at the summit of Kīlauea, where volcanic eruptions are ongoing. Pele embodies the geological elements and related phenomena of volcanic activity. She is not a goddess who directs the lava; she is the lava. As the many manifestations of volcanism, Pele is respected for her ability to generate and expand the earth through her eruptions and flows.

—Healoha Johnston