Great Basin — Cradleboards: Carriers of Culture Part VII
Explore how cradleboards across Native nations reflect care, craftsmanship, and cultural traditions from tribe to tribe
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Cradleboards of the Great Basin
The Great Basin stretches across much of present-day Nevada, western Utah, and parts of Oregon, Idaho, and California in the United States. This vast desert region, ringed by mountains and salt flats, shaped cradleboards built for endurance and suited to a nomadic lifestyle.
Cradleboards of the Great Basin Tribes
In the Great Basin, cradleboards carried children across desert flats and sagebrush trails. Lightweight, flexible, and shaped by scarcity, these cradles show the ingenuity of the Paiute, Mono, and Ute peoples in adapting to their unique homeland.
NORTHERN PAIUTE (NUMU)
During his or her first month of life, a Northern Paiute baby was placed in a soft basket and carried in the arms of loved ones. This basket did not indicate the gender of the child. During this month, the child's first balsa cradle was made.
As the child grew, a series of cradles were made to accommodate growth. A Paiute balsa cradle was made of a flat, wedge-shaped base of willow rods with a simple awning to protect the baby from the weather and injury.
Paiute CradleboardRed Earth
Zigzags for girls, dashes for boys
The gender of the baby dictated the designs on the cradleboard. A wooden frame supported a twined basket backing and curved hood to cover the baby. The hood was decorated with a zigzag design for a girl and a row of inclined dashes for a boy.
A skin, decorated with beads, covered the cradle. After the baby outgrew the cradle, it was destroyed.
From northern Nevada to the Mojave Desert
The Paiute lived throughout the western United States and were among the widest ranging of the Great Basin/Plateau tribes. While centered in northern Nevada, the north branch of the Tribe extended to the deserts of eastern Oregon and south to California's Mojave Desert.
The southern branch extended from the Mojave in the West to the Colorado River area of South Central Utah.
This tribe lived mostly on gathered roots and berries, and the little hunting they did was with clubs instead of bows and arrows or spears. The Paiute relied upon the jack rabbit to provide meat as well as fur and leather for clothing and shelter.
Paiute CradleboardRed Earth
Cradle in Northern Paiute language: hübbə
EASTERN ΜΟΝΟ
Cradleboards of the Eastern Mono tribe feature a double layer of stiff rods, one horizontal and the other vertical, twined together with strips of redbud or other bark. The strips are applied in diagonals, diamonds or other decorative patterns.
Eastern Mono CradleboardRed Earth
Designs in the weave marked boy or girl
Other decorative features woven into the sun-shade announce the gender of the child. Diagonal slash marks indicate use by a boy, and a diamond or zigzag pattern a girl.
Mono is a synonym for a band of Paiute people in California and Nevada. The Eastern Mono people are also known as Owens Valley Paiute. Since the Paiute and its subgroups lived in a very arid and inhospitable area of the country, they had little contact with Europeans until the second half of the 1800s.
Cradle in Mono language: hüp
UTE
Ute cradleboards are distinguished from those of other tribes by the curved shade above the baby's head, shaped from supple limbs of the Tamarisk bush. This shade could be draped with a cloth to shelter the baby from weather.
Following Ute tradition, the mother sang a specified lullaby while working on her baby's cradleboard. After the baby was born, the umbilical cord was placed in a pouch and tied to the cradleboard symbolizing the child being "tied to family and home." Cradleboards made with white leather are for males while yellow leather represents a female baby.
Ute Chief Severo and Family (c. 1885, published 1900) by Charles A. Nast, Detroit Photographic CompanyNational Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Buckskin and beadwork crowned Ute designs
Photos taken in the 1800s of Ute leaders and their families show large elaborate cradleboards more than three feet tall. The boards were covered in buckskin and had a wide band of beadwork arched across the front crown.
Ute CradleboardRed Earth
Leather strands secured the bundled child
Fringed buckskin decorated the top of the pouch where the baby was bundled while leather strands laced it up.
Ute CradleboardRed Earth
Ute means “Land of the Sun”
The word Ute means "Land of the Sun" in their Native language. Like the plains tribes, the Ute hunted big game such as deer and antelope. They were placed on reservations in the 1880s. The state of Utah is named for the tribe.
Ute CradleboardRed Earth
Cradle in Ute language: Koon-odze
From these vast interior basins, we turn next to the cradle traditions along the Pacific coast. Whether woven from redwood bark or shaped with plains-style boards, these cradles speak to both innovation and continuity, the final chapter in our cradleboard journey.
Continue exploring: Part VIII — Cradleboards of Northern California
Red Earth Cradleboards
Special thanks to Dr. Harry "Doc" and Dorothy Swan Deupree for their contribution of the Deupree Cradleboard Collection to the Red Earth Museum.
Photography by
Danny Sands
Research by
John Elder
Lori Gonzalez
Scott Tigert
Chelsey Curry
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