Pit River Beadwork

Additional Terms

Pit River Beadwork

The Pit River Indians had a varied material culture due to the great variation in elevation, climate, and vegetation of their homelands in the high sierras, which included Mount Shasta and Lassen Peak. The eleven bands of the Pit River Tribe speak the closely related languages of Achumawi and Atsugewi, and control six Shasta and Modoc County reservations. This area of Northern California is known for its fine baskets, but generally not for its beadwork. Small, loom and woven beaded, pouch necklaces is an art form that appears only in the Pit River region.

Glass beads entered California through trading posts such as Fort Ross on the central California coast and the Franciscan Missions. Few California tribes incorporated them into their material culture, however, with the exception of the Pit River Tribes. Bead-weaving, the technique used by the Pit River groups, shares many technical traits with woven mats and twined baskets. In this technique, the method of stringing beads is similar to those used in textile and basket weaving. In contrast to knotting or looping strings around each other, the bead represents an alternate way to secure strings together. This may indicate that the practice of bead-weaving developed alongside other, pre-contact industries.

beadwork

Native American art