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"Thank you, mother," said Gesnip. "If Titas's mother had made a black diamond basket, maybe the snake would not have bitten her." "While you work tell us how the first baby basket was made," begged Cleeta. The mother nodded; and as she wound and pressed closely the moist chippa, and the cactus needle flew in and out with the creamy kah-hoom or the black tsuwish, she told the story.

"Payuchi," she said, "put away this basket of grasshopper meal. And, Gesnip, go to the jacal and find me the coils for basket weaving." "What shall I bring?" asked Gesnip. "The large bundle of chippa that is soaking in a basket, and the big coil of yellow kah-hoom and the little one of black tsuwish which are hanging up, and bring me my needle and bone awl." "Do you want the coil of millay?"

Round and round she coiled the chippa, the butt of one piece overlapping the tip of another, while with her needle she covered all with the smoothly drawn kah-hoom. After a time she laid the kah-hoom aside for a stitch or two of the black root of the tule, called tsuwish. The children had watched the starting of the basket, then had begun a game of match, with white and black pebbles.

Taking a dripping chippa, or willow bough, from the basket where it had been soaking, she dried it on leaves and wound it tightly in a close coil the size of her thumbnail, then spatted it together until it seemed no longer a cord, but a solid piece of wood.