What do you think would be the easiest way for the
women to weave the splints into baskets?
What kind of baskets did they need? Would they be apt
to make them all in the same way?
Have you ever seen a basket that will hold water?
If a basket was almost water-tight, how could you make
it water-tight?
_How the Women Wove Splints_
When the splints were made, the women began to weave them into baskets.
Some of the splints were wide and some of them were narrow.
Some of them were thin, and some of them were thick.
But the women did not mind this.
At first they wove them by interlacing, as Sharptooth had woven the
basket of rushes.
[Illustration: “_They wove the splints in open work_”]
But since the strands were not all the same width, the weaving did not
look the same.
After a while they began to sort the splints.
They put the wide splints into one pile and the narrow ones into
another.
Then they wove the wide splints in open work and made baskets for
carrying roots and leaves.
They wanted smaller baskets for carrying berries, so they used the
narrow splints.
They wove these splints in close work so that the berries would not
drop out.
[Illustration: “_They wove these splints in close work_”]
Some of the women wanted still closer weaving, so they pressed the
splints down with their fingers.
When their fingers became sore from pressing hard, they used a long
bone.
By driving the splints with a long bone, the weaving was made firm and
strong.
Some of the baskets they made in this way were found to be water-tight.
So they sometimes used them for carrying water.
[Illustration: “_By driving the splints with a long bone, the weaving
was made firm and strong_”]
When the baskets became very dry, the wood shrank and this made little
holes in the baskets.
But the women soon learned to stop the leak by mending the baskets with
pitch.