Dat So La Lee (Louisa Keyser)
Carson City, Carson City, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Dat So La Lee. Famed Washoe basket maker, Datsolalee, is buried in this cemetery along with many other Washoe weavers. Also known as Louisa Keyser. Dat So La Lee, and Dabuda, over 120 of her major documented baskets were made expressly for sale to Arts and Crafts collectors from 1895 until her death in 1925 under patronage of the Cohn family. Datsolalee’s baskets are prized by collectors and displayed in museums across the country.Utilitarian, straight-walled, decorated coiled willow basketry is a Washoe tradition extending back thousands of years. Datsolalee brought international fame to the spherical Washoe degikup willow basket and highlighted the form with innovative decorative motifs in bracken fern and redbud Fibers. She and her patrons promoted this craft to the public, elevated it to an art form, and, most importantly, motivated basketry production by other tribal members during a period when the Washoe were recovering from mid-nineteenth- century loss of their homelands and aboriginal life ways.
Erected by Washoe Indians
The Story
Louisa Keyser — known as Datsolalee — was a Washoe weaver whose spherical degikup willow baskets, decorated with bracken fern and redbud, elevated a thousands-of-years-old utilitarian craft into internationally celebrated fine art. Working under the patronage of the Cohn family from 1895 until her death in 1925, she produced more than 120 documented major baskets now prized in museums nationwide. Her success came as the Washoe were recovering from the mid-19th-century loss of their homelands, and it inspired renewed basketry across the tribe.
Why it matters
Datsolalee showed that Native artistry could command national acclaim on its own terms, and her legacy helped sustain Washoe cultural traditions through a period of profound dispossession.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the time this cemetery in Carson City became the resting place of the woman remembered here, the Washoe people had already lived for countless generations in the Great Basin, along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and around the shining waters of Lake Tahoe. Theirs was a homeland of pine forests, high desert, and mountain lakes, and their weavers had been coiling willow into baskets for thousands of years.
Then came the mid-nineteenth century, and with it a rush of newcomers drawn by silver and gold. Within a single generation the Washoe lost much of the land and the seasonal way of life that had sustained them. It was against this backdrop of upheaval and dispossession — a people trying to hold on to who they were — that a remarkable artist did her work.
The years from 1895 to 1925, when her most famous baskets were made, fell in an era when many Americans, weary of factory-made goods, were rediscovering handcraft. Collectors of the Arts and Crafts movement prized objects made slowly, by hand, with care. That hunger for authentic craftsmanship would help carry Washoe basketry to a national audience.
People & events
She was known by several names — Dabuda in her own community, Louisa Keyser to the world around her, and most famously Datsolalee, or Dat So La Lee. What she became was one of the greatest basket weavers the world has known.
Her signature was the degikup: a round, spherical willow basket that swells outward and then curves back toward a small mouth. Onto this demanding form she brought innovative designs, worked in the dark fibers of bracken fern root and the warm red of redbud. The coiling was fine, the shapes were sure, and the results were unlike anything being made for sale at the time.
From 1895 until her death in 1925 she worked under the patronage of the Cohn family, who promoted her baskets to collectors and kept careful documentation. More than 120 of her major baskets were recorded — each one representing months of patient labor. She is buried in this cemetery alongside many other Washoe weavers, a reminder that she belonged to a whole tradition of skilled hands, not to herself alone.
Its place in the American story
Datsolalee's story matters because it upends an old and stubborn assumption. For much of American history, Native craftwork was treated as anonymous "artifact" rather than art, and its makers went unnamed. Here was a Native woman whose baskets were documented, celebrated, and collected as the work of a named artist — prized today in museums across the country.
She helped elevate a utilitarian craft into a recognized art form on its own terms, without abandoning the traditions it grew from. In doing so she showed the wider public that Native artistry could command national acclaim not as a curiosity, but on the strength of its mastery.
Perhaps most important of all, her success rippled back into her own community. Her example and her patrons' promotion motivated other Washoe people to keep weaving during the very decades when so much else had been taken from them. A living tradition thousands of years old was carried forward, in part, because one artist proved its worth to a country that had nearly overlooked it.
If you visit
This is a memorial in a cemetery, and it rewards a quiet, reflective visit. Come understanding that you are standing among the graves of Washoe weavers — this is a place of a whole community's craft and memory, not a single celebrity's monument.
If you have the chance, pair your visit with time spent looking at actual Washoe baskets in a museum collection. Once you have seen a degikup up close — the rounded body, the tiny even stitches, the dark fern and red redbud patterns — the marker's words take on real weight. You begin to grasp how many hours of skilled hands each basket represents.
Carson City makes a natural stop for anyone exploring the eastern Sierra, and this site fits well into a day that also takes in the region's mining and territorial history. Give yourself a moment here to consider that the land around you was Washoe homeland long before any of those other stories began — and that its art survives to this day.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Louisa Keyser (Datsolalee)
- · Cohn family
Themes & tags
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