Sarah Jim Mayo

Sarah Jim Mayo (1858 – December 1918) was a Washoe basket weaver. The daughter of the tribal leader Captain Jim Henukeha, Mayo rose to prominence in the early 1900s for her innovations in basketry. She is credited with expanding the traditionally simple Washoe baskets to include a wide palette of colors and pictorial designs. Baskets created by Mayo were delivered to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Biography

Early life Sarah Jim Mayo was born in 1858 in the traditional Washoe lands of the Carson Valley of Nevada. She was the youngest daughter of Captain Jim, also known by his traditional name He'nu-keha, the principal chief of the Washoe people and an ally of the United States government in the region. During the Paiute War of 1860, Captain Jim was instrumental in ensuring peace between the Washoe and the white settlers after he surrendered his firearms. Captain Jim died in 1868.

Throughout her life, Mayo followed the typical Washoe transhumant migration patterns. In the spring and summer, the Washoe would camp on the southern shore of Lake Tahoe, near the modern-day Tallac Village, California, where they would cater to the large tourist population. In the winter, the Washoe returned to the Carson Valley; however, as much of the Carson Valley became claimed by white ranchers, the Washoe needed to seek employment in order to obtain permission to camp on their traditional lands. Mayo worked as a domestic servant at ranch houses, and she would make and sell traditional Washoe baskets to both tourists and ranchers.

Mayo was married three times. When she was young, she married a man named Big George and had two children with him. They separated in 1888, and she soon after married a man named Tom Sanco. She and Sanco had one child together, and Mayo had another child out of wedlock. Sanco left her in 1896. In 1900, she married Captain Pete Mayo, a Washoe chief and the father of Maggie Mayo James, who would later also become a famous basket weaver. Through this marriage, she achieved considerable political influence and argued for her husband's authority based on her descent from Captain Jim.

Baskets Mayo's style of basket weaving was inspired by Dat So La Lee, a prominent contemporary Washoe weaver, with Mayo imitating her degikup style. Despite drawing inspiration from her, Mayo's baskets are described as being the complete "antithesis" of Dat So La Lee's. Whereas Dat So La Lee's baskets contained finely stitched simple motifs in contrasting colors with few pictures, Mayo's baskets feature large complex motifs with combinations of colors for "greater richness, solidity, and depth". Mayo's works also feature expansive sets of images and settings containing full narratives, with more attention given to the difficulty of the design than the stitching itself. Mayo expanded the traditional Washoe color scheme, which consisted solely of black and red, to include brown, yellow, green, gray, and pink. She also combined multiple colors together in a single motif, which resulted in rich and dramatic patterns.

Among her most significant innovations was the introduction of pictorial images into Washoe basketry. Between 1905 and 1910, Mayo began including representative figures into her baskets, such as "trees, butterflies, eagles, horses, houses, and arrows". A collection of her baskets were also presented to President Theodore Roosevelt while he was in office. Mayo's baskets became so widely recorded and disseminated partially due to the patronage of Margaretta Dressler, whose husband William F. Dressler was a prominent rancher and state senator from the Carson City area. Unlike the typically exploitative relationship between a white patron and a non-white artist, Dressler treated Mayo as an equal, and the two became genuine friends. Dressler collected, photographed, and documented many of Mayo's baskets, many of which survived due to Dressler's work. Dressler also took many personal photographs of Mayo.

Wilson basket

Mayo wove her most famous basket in 1913. Dubbed the Presentation Basket, it was created for President Woodrow Wilson as a gift and political gesture to remind the United States government of the historical alliance with the Washoe.

Soon after the basket was delivered, Congress passed a series of bills to aid the Washoe; however, it is unclear if the basket directly influenced this. Author Frank W. Porter notes that by the time the basket arrived in Washington, "Nevada's congressmen may have just introduced the bills". The legislation included the appropriation of $15,000 to the Washoe tribe, including $10,000 for the purchasing of homesteading lands. Despite these funds, the Washoe were unable to convince any local ranchers to sell their lands, besides the Dresslers, who sold a substantial portion of their ranchland. By 1917, the Washoe were able to purchase tracts of land in Carson City, Dresslerville, and Reno.

Death Mayo died in December 1918 at her home in Gardnerville, aged 60. By this point, her eyesight had begun to fail, and her husband died earlier in the year from the Spanish flu. Following her death, The Sacramento Bee wrote that "for more than forty years she was one of the best known Indian women in Nevada, and exercised a wide influence on the acceptance of the ways of the white men by her people".