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Southeast Baskets
Southeast Baskets - The Southeast region included Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas. This region was home to some of the most ancient, complex and advanced Native American civilizations in the Americas. These peoples lived in large permanent villages surrounded by wooden walls for protection. These skilled farmers grew tobacco, corn, beans, melons, sunflowers and squash, with corn being the primary crop. Contact with whites started with the Spanish, then the French and English. Through disease, war and dislocation, some entire civilizations had disappeared almost without a trace. The Native Americans of the Southeast felt the clash of cultures earlier and more profoundly than those in other regions. Their land was desirable for settling by the Spanish, French and English and by the lat 1840s, the U.S. government had forced most of the region’s Indians westward to new “homes”. The two most important Southeast basket making tribes of the region were the Chitimacha (small southern Louisiana tribe) and the Cherokee. Their baskets were crafted of narrow splints cut from river cane. The Chitimacha appear to have been the first tribe to use cane in basket making, and they remain masters in its use to the present day. The finest Southeast Baskets were double-woven with two layers of twilled plaiting that joined only at the finishing rim edge. The designs were created by using dyed pieces in combination with natural tan splints to create diagonal bands of color overlaid with geometric patters of circles, triangles, squares, four-pointed stars or running/looping chains. These patterns decorated only the outside of a double-woven Southeast basket – the inside layer was usually woven entirely of undyed cane. The biggest threat to traditional Chitimacha basketry today is a lack of cane, destroyed by development of its wetland habitat.
The other important Southeast basket making tradition lies with the Cherokee who originally lived throughout southern Appalachia. The whites desired their land so the Cherokee were stripped of their ancestral lands and rights by the state, being displaced early in the 19th century. The tribe sued to win back their land and in the late 1820s, their case went before the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall rendered the state laws unconstitutional. President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce it and instead signed a law in 1830 to remove the Indians. During the following decade, the U.S. government forcibly and shamefully relocated thousands of Cherokee to reservations in Oklahoma…thus the infamous “Trail of Tears”. At least 2,000 of the estimated 16,000 Cherokees who were forced westward on the trail are believed to have died en route. A small group of Cherokee remained in the east due to either becoming U.S. citizens or fugitives. Eventually the government purchased reservation land at Cherokee, North Carolina (near Ashville) and allowed both groups of eastern Cherokee to settle on the reservation where they remain to this day.
The Cherokee basket makers originally worked with river cane from which they constructed twilled, double-woven baskets. They switched over to oak splint when they began selling their baskets to their white neighbors. On time passed and interactions between them and their neighbors increased, the Cherokee shared forms, materials and techniques. At times, it’s difficult to differentiate between white and Cherokee Southeast Baskets. However, some techniques remained unique to the Cherokee such as the use of dyed splints, rarely found in early utilitarian baskets made by whites. The Cherokee commonly used simple alternating rows of colored and uncolored weavers on their baskets. Most baskets have lids.
The Indian-managed Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc. cooperative in Cherokee, North Carolina represents over one hundred Cherokee artisans. Contemporary Cherokee basket makers are experimenting with a variety of materials and forms, creating distinctive modern twists on traditional themes. They continue to balance tradition and change, adapting their art in response to diminishing resources and fickle markets. The finest basket makers have managed to remain true to their art, and to produce baskets that add to and extend the rich history of this important tribal craft. Some other links of interest: Cherokee Indian Basketry Information Cherokee Basket Weaver’s Association Tribe Works to Keep Ancient Tradition Alive (Chitimacha) The Cabildo-Two Hundred Years of Louisiana History (Chitimacha) Return from Southeast Baskets to Native American Indian Baskets
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