Trinket Basket Decorated with the Initials R.T. and a Figure of a Baseball Player

Mother of a Raphael Tortes, Luiseño, unknown dates
Luiseño (Luiseno)
California culture

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collected 1905 or 1907

Grass, sumac, rush, and sea blight; coiled, grass foundation, counter-clockwise direction

Overall: 3 5/16 × 4 13/16 × 6 7/8 in. (8.4 × 12.2 × 17.4 cm)

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Bequest of Frank C. and Clara G. Churchill

46.17.9314

Geography

Place Made: Riverside, United States, North America

Period

20th century

Object Name

Basket

Research Area

Native American

Native American: California Culture

On view

Label

This basket was once owned by Raphael Tortes, one of the thousands of Native children forced into government boarding schools in the 20th century. The figures on the basket are baseball players, suggesting that Raphael was a member of the baseball team at the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California. Made and given to him by his mother, this basket weaves together a story of cultural collision through its Euro-American subject matter and Native artistic form. 

Yet, this basket was not just a symbolic trinket by which to remember home but also something to sell if money was short, and, indeed, Raphael sold this basket to Frank and Clara Churchill, who gave it to the museum in 1946. His mother’s inclusion of figures playing America’s favorite pastime likely made the basket more appealing to these white collectors. Baseball’s popularity also made it an ideal vehicle for assimilating Native children into a collective American national identity.

From the 2024 exhibition, A Space for Dialogue 117, Sports Culture: Gender, Belonging, and Nationhood, Madyson Buchalski '24, Conroy Intern

Course History

ARTH 82, History of Museums and Collecting, Joy Kenseth, Spring 2012

WRIT 5, On Poor Taste, William Boyer, Winter 2015

ARTH 83, History of Museums and Collecting, Joy Kenseth, Spring 2015

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 117, Sports Culture: Gender, Belonging, and Nationhood, Madyson Buchalski '24, Conroy Intern, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 9 - May 5, 2024

Native Ecologies: Recycle, Resist, Protect, Sustain, Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-July 15, 2019

Survival/Art/History: American Indian Collections from the Hood Museum of Art, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 18, 2000-April 7, 2002.

Publication History

Tom Willman, "Sherman Institute in the Golden Age of Native American Sport", in Riverside Historical Society Journal, Riverside, CA, 25, December 2018, pp. 28-42, ill. p. 32.

Provenance

Made by Mrs. Tortese [mother of Raphael Tortese, possibly Tortes], a student at the Sherman Indian School, Riverside, California]; selected the Sherman Indian School's Superintendent Harwood H. Hall (1859-1928) for Clara G. Corser Turner Churchill (1851-1945) and BIA Inspector Frank Carroll Churchill (1850-1912), Riverside, California, 1905 or 1907; bequeathed to present collection, 1946.

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