Mabel McKay
Mabel McKay was a member of the Long Valley Cache Creek Pomo Indians and was of Patwin descent. She was the last dreamer of the Pomo people and was renowned for her basket weaving. She sat on California's first Native American Heritage Commission.
Life
McKay was born on January 12, 1907, in Nice in Lake County, California. Her father was Yonta Boone and her mother was Daisy Hansen. She was raised by her maternal grandmother, Sarah Taylor, who taught her the Long Valley Cache Creek language and how to forage for medicinal plants. At the age of eight, she was guided by her dreams to weave her first basket. She did not attend school past the third grade due to a series of illnesses.Basket-weaving
McKay claimed that weaving, for her, was a spiritual path rather than a craft. She claimed she was strictly instructed by Spirit as to how and what to weave. Because of the sacred nature of her weaving, she usually wove in private. In keeping with Pomo tradition, she used sedge for her baskets and redbud for the red designs. Some of her baskets also used feathers.Her baskets were featured in many newspapers and she was viewed as a prodigy.She began giving demonstrations in the State Indian Museum in Sacramento, where she refused to sell the baskets she made and instead gave them as gifts. In the late 1970s she began teaching basket-weaving classes for both native and non-native students. She continued with her baskets until death, and many have been exhibited in museums such as the National Museum of Natural History.