ART
Gu Oidak, Arizona
Inside a modest trailer home on the remote desert fields of Gu Oidak, about thirteen miles south of Sells, Arizona, a Tohono O’odham woman is traveling back in time. In her hands rests an ancient, cream-colored, hand-woven crown.
“My great grandma made this crown, and I gave away the baskets that sat on it to the women of my life,” says Kimberly Mull, who’s been weaving traditional baskets (hua in O’odham) since she was a girl. She points to a photograph of herself taken in 1979, right after she won the title of Miss Tohono O’odham Nation. Atop the crown she wears in the photo, the same one she’s holding, are several palm-sized, circular baskets.
Among the other artifacts of daily life in Mull’s home—a frozen pizza, grandchildren’s stuffed animals, and shoes—this image stands out. Like the crown, it reveals the significance of basket weaving for Mull and other Tohono O’odham weavers as an artform that endures through time, while also adapting to change.
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“We were always known as basket weavers,” Mull says. “Weaving is part of our upbringing, culture and heritage.”
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As a young girl, Mull was taught to intertwine the raw materials of the Sonoran Desert into artistic basketry by the women who raised her. “Back then, we didn’t have tablets, nor a TV to play with, so we would sit for long hours with grandma. If it wasn’t grandma it would be auntie. If it wasn’t auntie, it would be my mom, sitting there, teaching us to weave baskets,” Mull remembers.
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Her hands mimic the movements of weaving. “They taught me how to process the desert materials so that I would find it easier to work with them,” she says then reaches for her granddaughter Kaliyah and runs her hand over the three-year-old’s long dark hair. In 2021, Mull’s own daughter died at age 23 in a car accident. Since then, she has put aside weaving to take care of her two grandchildren.
December 2024
Kimberly Mull has been weaving traditional Tohono O’odham baskets since she was ten years old and learned the artform from her grandmother, auntie, and mother. Photo by Natasha Cortinovis
DESERT MATERIALS AND DESERT DESIGNS
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The first materials Mull learned to use were leaves from the soaptree yucca (takwi in O’odham), a tall, drought-tolerant succulent growing on the sandy mesas, washes, and grasslands of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. Like many Tohono O’odham women, Mull learned at a young age how to work with the coarse leaves of the yucca to weave the outer design—or weft—of a basket. “We never pick the yucca when it is raining because it turns black. It has to be a sunny day between May and July for a whiter yucca,” she says, adding that it is not uncommon to get bit by insects while harvesting.
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She then learned to clean the leaves and lay the inner part in the sun to dry it and bleach into a lighter cream color. Or sometimes she would store the chlorophyll-filled leaves in a sunless space so they could keep their light green color. Afterwards, she’d cut them into thin splints to sew onto an inner foundation, called the warp. If the splints are tightly sewed, the basket is considered “closed stitched.” If the splints allow a glimpse of the inner foundation, the basket is considered “split stitched,” she explains.
The warp is nowadays mostly made of split beargrass (moho in O’odham), a native grass sometimes called “Indian Basket grass,” in honor of its value within the Indigenous basket-making tradition. In the past, Tohono O’odham baskets were made with willow (ce’ul in O’odham) twigs women cut from willow trees bordering the stream beds. However, willows have become more scarce in Southern Arizona, as water flows in rivers have decreased, says Reuben Naranjo, a Tohono O’odham weaver and potter who also makes paper from native plants.
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“We had to stop using willow because we could no longer access it,” Naranjo says. “The Santa Cruz River doesn’t really run anymore. Willows are rare.” Because of that, basket weavers began using yucca instead, he says.
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O’odham weavers in northern Mexico once made baskets with the reddish stalks of the limberbush (wa:s in O’odham), a heat-resistant plant that only grows in lower elevations of the coastal Mexican Sonoran Desert. “But there hasn’t been one made in sixty years,” Naranjo says. However, the Seri or Comcáac people in Sonora, still use limberbush for baskets, he says.
Reuben Naranjo is a renowned Tohono O’odham potter and basket weaver, acclaimed for his intricate designs and traditional techniques that honor his cultural heritage. Photo by Steven Meckler
Naranjo knows of only two O’odham weavers in Sonora, Mexico, who still make baskets out of yucca, beargrass, and devil’s claw—all common materials for O’odham weavers in the United States. “It’s like with the language: there’s less than ten people who speak Tohono O’odham in Sonora,” he says.
Devil’s claw (ihuk in O’odham), a plant named for its horn-shaped fruit or sharp, hooked seed pods, is a material that brings resilience and black color to O’odham baskets, Naranjo says.
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Mull says when she was first learning, devil’s claw was hard for her small hands to work with. “I needed more strength to tame the devil’s claw,” she recalls.
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Upon harvesting in late spring, weavers often cover the claws with wood ash to prevent them from molding and store them in darkness to preserve their color. When the ash has absorbed all the moisture, they are soaked in warm water to soften their texture.
“I cut them with pruning shears and stick them into a bucket with hot water,” says Naranjo, holding a coil of wet devil’s claw in his palm.
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He soaks the claws for several months, he says, changing the water every week. He’ll use some of this material to make a hair piece, he says, a small, deep basket with a wooden stick that can hold a bun in place.
Reuben Naranjo’s Hello Kitty basket combines traditional weaving methods with contemporary images. Photo by Natasha Cortinovis
While weavers use devil’s claw for black design, they sometimes use the root of the banana yucca (takwi tatk in O’odham) for red-wine colored designs, Naranjo says.
“The root is more difficult to weave: it grows a bit crooked and requires a lot of work,” he says. “We have to manually dig it out of the ground in a careful way or it will break.”
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O’odham basket designs are inspired by the flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert. The plainest motif is called Coyote Tracks for its mild resemblance to the footprints of coyotes patrolling the fields. More elaborate motifs include Squash Blossom, figuring five or six of the flower’s petals, Man in the Maze, Desert Tortoise, Owl, and Mexican Brown Bat, which pollinates the saguaro cactus. Each design carries a meaning drawn from the kinship the O’odham have with their homelands.
Weavers also introduce new motifs into their baskets, either for customer commissions or out of their own fascination. A prize-winning basketmaker from Gila Bend, Annie Antone, for example, has created designs that illustrate couples dancing, a man on horseback, and Queen of the Night cactus flowers.
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Naranjo has woven four baskets with Hello Kitty designs, he says, using devil’s claw for the kitty’s body, and red cotton embroidery floss for its bowtie. “I sold them right away,” he says. “People think they’re cute.”
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STURDY MATERIALS REQUIRE STURDY HANDS
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But for traditional baskets, O’odham weavers work primarily with their hands and nature’s gifts. A knife helps them cut the materials and a hammer often helps them flatten the basket as they weave it. If they desire a deeper basket, they will bend, mold and shape the materials as they interlace them.
“As we go round and round counterclockwise from the central knot, we manipulate the work to create a flatter or deeper shape,” explains Naranjo.
Or, as Mull explains, “We tighten the weft to make the basket deeper.”
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Weavers emphasize how labor-intensive the artform is. From collecting, caring for, and processing the plants, to lacing and braiding them, to creating designs and shaping the basket, the craft offers consistent challenges and rewards.
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“This art taught me patience,” says Naranjo, remembering how restless he was as a child before falling in love with the craft. “It’s a lot of work, time, and concentration.”
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And resilience.
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Basket weavers often abrade or cut their hands while weaving. “I’m always poking my fingers,” Naranjo says. “It’s like the weaving Gods want blood.”
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Elena Mendez, horsehair basket weaver. Photo by Steven Meckler
Elena Mendez, an O’odham basket weaver who works with horsehair, says working with that material roughs up her hands as well. “I use bandages to protect my thumbs while weaving, but sometimes they are sore until almost three days after anyway,” she says.
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Mendez’s miniature horsehair baskets serve either as pendants for necklaces and earrings or as pieces for Indigenous art collections. She learned to weave from her mother, Doña Mendez. “I always remember her as a kid sitting by the window in her chair, weaving, while listening to her country music,” she says.
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Her work honors her mother’s memory, she says. To keep the precious tradition alive, Mendez taught the artform to her two daughters as well.
According to writer Diane Dittemore’s book Woven From The Center, horsehair baskets are unique to the O’odham people. With the introduction of horses in the American West, the Tohono O’odham began making very fine baskets ranging from the size of a coin to a small bowl using only horses’ tail hair. While the methods are similar to traditional willow or yucca basket weaving, the material is distinct.
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But horsehair is hard to find in South Tucson, where Mendez lives. When Mendez was a child, her parents used to get a supply from a slaughterhouse. Now, she orders cut and clean horsehair online in the three natural colors of white, brown, and black, or in dyed pink, blue, green, and red. Occasionally, people involved in horseback riding donate brushed, cleaned, and cut horsehair to her, she says.
Horsehair baskets, like these by Elena Mendez, use traditional Tohono O’odham weaving techniques. Photo by Natasha Cortinovis
FROM UTILITARIAN GOOD TO COLLECTOR'S ITEM
In earlier times, the O’odham created willow, yucca or horsehair baskets for utilitarian purposes, such as containing, transporting, and collecting wild foods, domestic goods, and even water. “Women even weaved parching baskets entirely with devil’s claw to toast something quickly, like wheat, coffee, grains and corn,” says Naranjo.
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Hand-woven baskets were also used to sift seeds, carry babies, and for rituals, dances, gatherings, and ceremonies. “Wine baskets were made to hold the mild liquor from the saguaro fruit during the rain ceremony, celebrated to invoke the monsoon rains at the end of the summer months,” Naranjo says. “These baskets were stiff, big and beautiful, but nobody does them anymore.”
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Once machine-made baskets and plastic became more prevalent, some traditional artforms died out or were made less often, because they were no longer necessary. Wine and parching baskets were lost to time, for instance. In the winds of change, many weavers abandoned the world of utilitarian basketry and stepped into that of tourism and art collection. As that happened, many finely coiled baskets found their way into museums, art galleries, exhibitions, fairs, festivals, markets, boutiques, shops, and the private homes of art traders and collectors.
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Joseph Knue, a devoted art, antiques and minerals collector in Tucson, owns over forty-five Tohono O’odham baskets, which rest on the shelves and walls of his home. Most of his baskets are more or less the size of a two hands’ held wide bowl. Some are bigger and deeper. Some have a lid.
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“I consider them works of art. Each piece is very unique, you’ll never find two that are alike,” he says, admiring the only sifting basket in his collection. “When I saw this basket, I just had to have it,” he admits with a big smile.
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In the shift to tourism, collections, or events, many weavers have chosen to specialize in miniature basketry for jewelry, decorations, or hair pieces like a crown or a hair tie instead of larger, utilitarian baskets.
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“Unless you’re very well known, it’s hard to receive a return that equals the energy you put into making a big, intricate, and elaborate basket,” says Naranjo.
Joseph Knue, a collector, owns forty-five Tohono O’odham baskets, each of which he considers a work of art. Photo by Natasha Cortinovis
KEEPING THE CRAFT AND CULTURE ALIVE
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Despite the challenges, for many weavers, carrying on the tradition is the most important part of their work. “I know I have to continue weaving for my mom,” Mendez says. “She would not have wanted me to give it up. I want people to know that our culture lives on through basket-weaving.”
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And while Mull is taking a break from basket weaving for a while, she knows she doesn’t want to drift too far from the craft. “When I look at the last basket that my mother ever made, I know I have to keep weaving, so I’ll make a bow tie and earrings for Christmas.”
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The continuity of this delicate craft, these weavers say, preserves the memory, soul, and identity of loved ones across loss, time and death. And with each movement, basket-making embodies precisely these splendors and travails of life.
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“O’odham people believe that basket-weaving is a metaphor for life: the central knot symbolizes your birth, each one of the stitches that you go over can be a day in your life, and you keep going and going and going until it finally ends, and that’s when you move on,“ Naranjo says. “You pass away.”