Born: 22 September 1899, United States
Died: 31 December 1990
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Elsie Comanche or Gomachu
Pomo basket weaver Elsie Comanche Allen is remembered for both preserving the patterns and techniques of her people, as well as passing on these skills and knowledge to future generations. Along with Mabel McKay and Laura Somersal, she is regarded as one of the best-known California basketweavers of her generation, and is the subject of books like Remember Your Relations: Elsie Allen Baskets, Family, And Friends (2005) and A promise kept: Basketry of the Pomo and the Elsie Allen basket collection (1996). Elsie Allen High School in Santa Rosa is named for her.
Allen was born into the Gomachu family (Anglicized as Comanche), to parents who worked as wage laborers on farms owned by non-Native Americans, like many Pomo of this time. She spoke only Pomo until she was 13, when she began learning English at a boarding school for Native American children. However, in less than a year, she chose instead to attend a day school. Having been raised in communities like Covelo, Hopland and Cloverdale, she moved to San Francisco briefly when she was 18. There she met her husband, Arthur Allen, whom she married in 1919 and went on to have four children together.
Allen learned to weave as a child, coming from a family whose accomplished basket weavers included her mother, Annie Ramon Gomachu Burke (1876–1962) and maternal grandmother, Mary Arnold (1845–1925). Her mother established the Pomo Indian Women’s Club, which promotes the tribe’s basketry, and taught her daughter to keep her baskets for future generations, rather than follow the tradition of burning or burying them. Allen was only able to take up weaving full-time when she was 62, after her children had all grown to adulthood. By the 1950s, community interest in basket weaving had shrunk, so Allen started teaching anyone who was interested in learning. This caused controversy among her Pomo community because she taught non-Natives as well as Native Americans, but her goal was to preserve the practice and traditions.
Allen was also a community activist, working with Pomo and Hintil women’s clubs to improve social and economic conditions, as well as promoting education, cultural preservation and Native American rights. She organized fundraisers to provide scholarships for Pomo children, helped linguist Abraham M. Halpern document the Southern Pomo language and participated in a desegregation case about non-Native-owned businesses refusing to allow Pomo and Caucasians to site together.