This is a classic style of Northern Arapaho cradle except instead of hide it was made of muslin. The quilled disc is a design element that is symbolic for protecting the brain of the baby and is made with sacred colors of red, yellow and black. The lacings represent the baby's ribs, arms, and legs. There are ladder like bands of quillwork that frame the child's face flopping over like braids. The cradle is fashioned over a bent willow hoop. The Arapaho had a Sacred Guild of Quill workers. After initiation quill workers were allowed to make a type of holy embroidery with symbolic designs. Work was restricted to a few objects and four specific colors representing four directions. The cradle is like a tipi as it houses the baby like a tipi houses the family and tribe so both men and women are represented. The disc is a traditional Arapaho design done a lot by the Women's Society of Quill workers. The Shoshone/Arapaho started making these types again in the 1970s and they might still be making them. Possibly matches with cradle strap 05.568.

This headdress was worn perpendicularly at the back of the head, not vertically on the crown, as is common with Native American headdresses of very similar style worn by the Yokuts of Central California. In general structure it resembles Pomo headdresses. Supplementary files: "Dance headress for a man; brown straight feathers rise out of a ruff of soft feathers. A quill pendant hangs from the front of the ruff. Condition: good."

Coiled vessel of slightly elongated globular form and woven in shades of brown with arrowhead and grain motifs depicting "Hunting in the Harvest Time". There are twenty-nine stitches to the inch. This is called a degikup basket a larger basket that curves towards the top and totally covered by the design a spherical, non-utilitarian basket produced by the technique of coiling.- and totally covered by the design a style Dat So La Lee (Louisa Keyser) invented. The primary basketry material is willow (Salix spp.), which is used to create the rods (warp) and the threads (weft). Bracken fern (Pteris aquilinium) and red bud (Cercis occidentalis) are the two primary materials used for the red and black decorative elements; both are processed into thread, which is spliced into the willow threads to create patterns on the light willow background. The three-rod technique, the form used originally and predominantly by the weavers of this period for the degikup, uses three willow stems to form the coils, which are curved along the horizontal plane and then sewn together with thread to create vertical height. Later artists switched to a one-rod technique, which produces a basket of somewhat less sculptural depth. The one-rod technique is less difficult and time intensive to produce, although not easy or quick by any means. The switch in styles reflected a response to the demands of the market. The provenance on this basket is definite (see provenance section). It is done in a style used for her major works between 1898 and 1916, involving a round shape, fine stitching (around 30 stitches per inch and either scattered or vertically arranged patterns of small design units. The arrow like forms are ripe grain, ripe harvest. the points on the end are arrow points for hunting.

08.491.8983 basket is on the right. (See also 08.491.8679 description.) The cooking basket (bush-ka) has the design of the mountain-quail top-knot. This design was Wilson's best known design. The mountain-quail has a very long, straight top knot. Author Sally Bates suggests that this design may have been favored as the weaver's name, Oymutnee, meant "the sound made by a quail." Baskets such as this one seem to be characteristic of the Maidu community of Mikchopedo at Chico, CA.

This is a conical shaped basket with a stepped flag design in brown on natural fiber colored background. The shells and feathers are fastened to the exterior and extend out from basket. Although called a puberty basket it is thought that this basket was not necessarily used for puberty ceremonial. At the time it was collected it was thought that ceremony no longer was being practiced so such baskets were no longer being made for traditional practice. While it may have been intended for such, there is no physical evidence that it was ever used to hold water, and it is more likely that it was made for sale, an aestheticized version of a traditional form.

Basket with cone-shaped wooden frame and woven sides. Three two pronged willow branches form the conical frame, attached to a circular branch with thin pieces of hide. The sides are an open, twilled weave of black and white goat hair. There is a long strap attached to one side of the frame, also woven black and white goat hair.

Round basket of coils over twig construction. Two bands of red and black horizontally striped design.