Coiled Cooking Basket (Bush-ku) with mountain quail topknot design (wash-wash-ka)

 This cooking basket is decorated with a motif of a mountain quail’s head plume, which was Amanda Wilson’s best-known design. The weaver may have favored it because her Native name (Oymutnee) means “the sound made by a quail.” The mountain quail, which inhabits the foothills and mountains west of the Rocky Mountains, has a very distinctive, thin double plume on its head. In addition to being an accomplished basket weaver, Wilson was an important leader in the Maidu women’s dance society.