While the gourd was large and convenient in form, it was difficult of transportation owing to its fragility. To overcome this it was encased in a coarse sort of wicker-work, composed of fibrous yucca leaves or of flexible splints. Of this we have evidence in a series of gourd-vessels among the Zuñis, into which the sacred water is said to have been transferred from the tubes, and a pair of which one of the priests, who came east with me two years ago, brought from New Mexico to Boston in his hands--so precious were they considered as relics--for the purpose of replenishing them with water from the Atlantic. These vessels are encased rudely but strongly in a meshing of splints (see Fig. 500), and while I do not positively claim that they have been piously preserved since the time of the universal use of gourds as water-vessels by the ancestry of this people, they are nevertheless of considerable antiquity. Their origin is attributed to the priest-gods, and they show that it must have once been a common practice to encase gourds, as above described, in osiery.
[Illustration: FIG. 500.--Gourd vessel enclosed in wicker.]
This crude beginning of the wicker-art in connection with water-vessels points toward the development of the wonderful water-tight basketry of the southwest, explaining, too, the resemblance of many of its typical forms to the shapes of gourd-vessels. Were we uncertain of this, we might again turn to language, which designates the impervious wicker water-receptacle of whatever outline as _tóm ma_, an evident derivation from the restricted use of the word _tóm me_ in connection with gourd or cane vessels, since a basket of any other kind is called _tsí ì le_.
It is readily conceivable that water-tight osiery, once known, however difficult of manufacture, would displace the general use of gourd-vessels. While the growth of the gourd was restricted to limited areas, the materials for basketry were everywhere at hand. Not only so, but basket-vessels were far stronger and more durable, hence more readily transported full of water, to any distance. By virtue of their rough surfaces, any leakage in such vessels was instantly stopped by a daubing of pitch or mineral asphaltum, coated externally with sand or coarse clay to harden it and overcome its adhesiveness.