Students learn about the area’s first residents when they study basket-weaving techniques at the Coos Historical & Maritime Museum. Contributed Photo

Thanks to a field trip to the museum, this spring students from throughout Coos County should take a closer, more educated look at their Easter baskets.

If last year’s family focus was to suss out chocolate bunnies and foil-wrapped candy eggs, look for this year’s fourth-grader to be studying the patterns in her basket’s weave, or worrying that a burden basket is equipped with handles, instead of the traditional tump-line.

The Coos Historical & Maritime Museum this month introduced a three-part education program about our region’s Native American history, lavishly illustrated by the museum’s own collection of Native American baskets.

Education Coordinator Lori Shanks developed an outreach project that will build students’ awareness of the area’s first inhabitants. Part one directs an Indian Education specialist to the fourth-grade classrooms, where maps, photographs, and discussions place today’s Indians within today’s society.

Part two is the field trip. From Powers to Reedsport, school busses have been pulling into the parking lot at the museum, which is located next to Simpson Park at the south end of McCullough Bridge.

Once inside, the young explorers are treated to hands-on experiences. They are invited to pick up, wear, or otherwise manipulate a varied cache of furs, pelts, and antlers. They are given “press passes,” followed by the chance to interview “living history” volunteers who are costumed (thanks to Little Theatre on the Bay) as historical celebrities: explorer Jedediah Smith, entrepreneur P.B. Marple, Coos Indian Annie Miner Peterson, and Upper Coquille Athabascan Indian Coquelle Thompson. But the real drama derives from the baskets. Filling several lighted cases and protected by climate control and staff, they illustrate the common human need to beautify and decorate our objects of daily life.

While basketry supplied nearly every domestic necessity for the Indians, it also reflected the artistic goals of the weaver. What colors can be incorporated into this mush bowl? How can this animal be suggested within the weave? Which feathers might best ornament this tray?

Women were the primary weavers, and their aesthetic sensibilities can be traced through their selection of grasses and roots, by the animals they chose to represent, and by the impressively fine-motor coordination required.

Today, the museum’s collection of baskets is both varied and fascinating. Included are several unusual miniatures (intended as gifts), as well as a 300-year old woven fish weir, an enormous burden basket, and a pair of clever, cross-woven cradle baskets.

The entire collection was documented in 2005 by Denise Hockema, anthropologist for the Coquille Indian Tribe. Many of the displayed baskets were woven by Hockema’s grandmother, a fact that serves as an important local connection for this popular “Stones, Bones and Baskets” exhibit.

Might a Native American basket be as costly as, say, an original oil painting? Yes. Recently a California Yokuts coiled women’s gambling tray — lovely, woven with woody root fibers of sedge, blackened fern root, and vibrantly crimson redbud inner bark — was priced at $45,000 by a Santa Fe gallery.

So, as students around the county think about colored eggs and marshmallow Peeps, they may also reflect on the baskets that contain the goodies. And perhaps they’ll remember their time with the Coos Historical & Maritime Museum, when they learned about the materials, the details and the art of the Native American basket makers.

Teri Albert reviews art and artists for The World. Comments on or story ideas for this column are welcome, and can be e-mailed to malbert@uci.net.