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June 2020 THE INDIAN TRADER
The Great Dot-So-La-Lee young girl of some 16 to 18 years of age. Shortly before she died, she visited a knoll where she clearly described her meeting with “the first white men and their pack animals” which tallied accurately with the time and place of Freemont’s visit. Further, she obtained from some members of the party, brass buttons with eagles on them which she cherished and kept with her for the remainder of her life. Assuming these facts are true, Dot-So-La-Lee would have been about 96 years old when she died. Sam Davis, the author of the history of Nevada, disputes this theory slightly, stating she was probably born about 1840 and lived to the age of 85. EARLY LIFE When still a young girl, Dot-So-La-Lee had become a proficient and versatile basket maker, but in 1850-1851 an unexpected turn of events forced her to discontinue her weaving. The Paiute tribe from the barren desert to the east had been searching for an accessible pass through the mountains to the lush vegetation of the Western lands of California. The small Washo tribe, among others, was blocking their way. A war ensued, and the Washo was subjected to complete subjugation... They were forced to give up all their worldly belongings, they were made to cut their hair, they were forced to accept white man’s names, and worse yet, they were no longer allowed to continue their most lucrative trade... that of basket making. Until this time, Dot-So-La-Lee had woven for the most part, “utilitarian” or ”culinary” baskets... baby cradles, carrying flails, burden baskets, and the like. Only on rare occasions had she produced a “ceremonial” basket, the type that would later bring her fame. Dot-So-Lee enjoyed games of chance and had woven a set of gambling sticks (usually made of wooden sticks or polished bones): these sticks were
Her original name was Da-Bu-Da, meaning “broad of hips,” reflecting the fact that she was a large woman weighing more than 300 pounds. Early in life she married a fellow tribesman named Assu, but continued to use her maiden name of Da-Bu-Da. Subsequently her husband and her two children died. Soon after the Civil War she was employed by a doctor, S. L. Lee in Carson City, and from this association assumed the name of Dot-So-La-Lee. In 1888, she again married to a mixed breed named Charley Kaiser and took the name, Louisa Kaiser. The latter name she used as identification symbols of all the baskets she made following the year 1895 when she was employed by Mr. and Mrs. Abram Cohn of Carson City. (The accurate records of Mr. Cohn show that the period of 1895 until she died in 1925, Do-So-La-Lee wove baskets numbered from “LK-1” to “LK-120.”) HER LIFE (1829-1925) Dot-So-La-Lee was born in a forlorn Indian village near the community that later became known as Sheridan, Carson City, Douglas County, Nevada. As neither tribal or American records or events concerning pre-1850 California tribes were kept in any significant manner, the exact date of her birth is impossible to confirm; however from related incidences, she described in later years, a reasonable approximation of her birthday may be established. The most logical of these was her contact with John C. Fremont and his volunteers that took place in January 1844, at Carson City when she was a
