The principal field of decoration among the Mohegan and Niantic, so far as we can now tell, seems to have been chiefly in paintings on baskets. Decorative wood-carving upon household utensils and sometimes upon implements was also quite common. Bead-work, on the other hand, appears to have been a secondary activity. A short account of the basket-making itself is required, before the basket decorations are described. For household and gardening purposes these people have developed a few types of baskets (_manu·´da_[3] “receptacle”) varying in shape, size, and weave. The most characteristic forms seem to have been rectangular baskets a foot or so in length, two-thirds as high, and of proportionate width, and without handles, though often provided with covers. These are the household storage articles (Plates I and II). For carrying garden products, and for hand use in general, are somewhat smaller round-bottomed baskets, with handles or bails, ranging in width from 4 inches up to baskets with a capacity of half a bushel (Plates III and V). Then we have the type known, among the Indians from Nova Scotia to the Southern States, as “melon”, “rib”, or “gizzard” baskets (Plate III, upper right hand corner), provided with bails, and also used for carrying. And, lastly, there are the open work baskets, some of which are small fancy articles, while others are used as strainers (Plates IV and VI). These fall under the general type of open hexagonal twill baskets. All these types, of course, are commonly found among practically all the tribes of the Atlantic coast, varying only in the minor details of weave at the rim and the bottom.
As to the materials, the Mohegan and Niantic, like the northern New England tribes, used prepared splints of the brown ash. Next in importance is the white oak. Here the pounding is unnecessary, the splints being more easily freed from the log. Swamp maple is also commonly used by the Mohegan basket-makers, although it is not as durable as either the oak or the ash.
All these materials go through the same processes of preparation before the splints are ready to be woven. The first stage in the process consisted in pounding the ash log all over, and then separating the layers of wood. Next, the lengths of splints were shaved smooth with a spoke-shave, which looks like a European tool. Hand gauges were then used to cut the splints into strips of uniform width. These gauges (Figure 1), not unlike those of the Penobscots, were provided with teeth made, in recent days, of clock springs; the width of the splint depending upon the distance at which the teeth were set in the end of the gauge. Another small implement, a sort of hand planer through which the splint was drawn to make it finer, was also obtained at the Mohegan village (Figure 2). The knives of the crooked type, _bən·ī·´dwaŋg_ (Figure 3), used by the Mohegans for woodworking in general, have a very pronounced curve, and are usually mounted on wooden or sometimes buckhorn handles. While not necessarily used directly in basket making, these knives are indispensable to the Indian workman. A very old bone pointed tool, probably a punch (Figure 4), seems to have been used in some way, perhaps in weaving the basket rims.