Arts & Cultures Collections Database

Pat earned a B.A. in Mathematics-Physics from Whitman College and spent 11 years as a mathematician-computer specialist. She now devotes her time to creating art and lecturing on Plateau tribal art. This basket was inspired by the Wasco basket collected by Lewis and Clark in 1805, now in the Peabody Museum at Harvard. Gold altered the design to include images of seven dogs and a star, which tell a traditional Wasco legend of the four Wolf brothers, a pet dog, and Coyote traveling to the sky to view the stars.

"In the Spirit of the Ancestors"-This basket was inspired by a Wasco basket collected by Lewis and Clark on the Columbia River in 1805. According to Gold, it is a fish net design with human faces that refer to "She Who Watches," a female chief who was turned into a pictograph by Coyote in ancient times. On this basket the dog-like images and a star tell a traditional Wasco legend of the four Wolf brothers, a pet dog, and Coyote traveling to the sky to view the stars.