Native American Pomoan basket-weavers. William Benson (1862-1937) was Eastern Pomo and his wife, Mary Benson (1878-1930), was Central Pomo. Both had Euro-American fathers. After marriage in 1894, they lived at the Central Pomo settlement of Yokaya, CA. Their first promoter was John Hudson (1857-1936), Ukiah medical doctor and amateur anthropologist, who took them to the fair in St Louis, MO, in 1904. Accustomed to dealing with Euro-Americans, William served as informant for the anthropologists Edwin M. Loeb and Jaime de Angulo and became the local agent for Grace Nicholson, a noted Pasadena basketwork dealer, for whom he made ceremonial costumes and implements and wrote down Pomo myths. In 1906 Nicholson acquired exclusive rights to baskets woven by both William and Mary in return for a monthly maintenance fee plus costs for materials and payment for the baskets. Nicholson promoted and publicized the Bensons and brought them to spend the winter of 1906-7 in Pasadena, where they constructed a large granary basket in front of her gallery on North Robles. Both weavers strove continually to increase the fineness of their weaving, decreasing the size of their baskets. Although they cooperated in the completion of some works, William tended to specialize in miniature and feathered, coiled baskets, while Mary made both small twined baskets and monumental coiled works like those of the Washoe weaver DAT SO LA LEE (Louisa Keyser), in one case copying one of her designs. Nicholson attempted to sell the Benson collection as a unit, but, after a lengthy loan, Frederic Douglas of the Denver Art Museum refused its purchase. At Nicholson's death in 1948, the collection passed to her secretary, Thyra Maxwell, who sold it in 1968 to the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, NY, through Frederick J. Dockstader. In the same year Maxwell donated the Nicholson papers, including William Benson's notebooks of myths, to the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.

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