While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Basketry. Basketry, including wattling,
matting, and bagging, may be de fined as the primitive textile art. Its
materials include nearly the whole series of North American textile plants, and
the Indian women explored the tribal habitat for the best. Constant digging in
the same favorite spot for roots and the clearing away of useless plants about
the chosen stems constituted a species of primitive agriculture. They knew the
time and seasons for gathering, how to harvest, dry, preserve, and prepare the
tough and pliable parts for use and to reject the brittle, and in what way to
combine different plants with a view to the union of beauty and strength in the
product. The tools and apparatus of the basket maker, who was nearly always a
woman, were most skilful fingers, aided by finger nails forage, teeth for a
third hand or for nippers, a stone knife, a bone awl, and polishers of shell or
gritty stone.
She knew a multitude of dyes, and in some instances the bark was chewed and the
splint drawn between the lips. In later times knives, awls, scissors, and other
utensils and tools of steel were added. In its technique basketry is divided
into two species woven and coiled. Woven basketry has warp and weft, and leads
up to loom work in softer materials. Of this species there are the following
varieties: Checker-work, in which the warp and weft pass over and another singly
and are indistinguishable; twilled work, in which each element of the weft
passes over and then under two or more warp elements, producing by varying width
and color an end less variety of effects; wickerwork, in which the warp of one
larger or two o r more smaller elements is in flexible, and the bending wrapped
work, wherein the warp is not flexed, and the weft in passing a warp element is
wrapped once around it, varied by drawing both warp and weft tight so as to form
half of a square knot; twined work, in which the warp is not bent and the weft
is made up of two or more elements, one of them passing behind each warp element
as the weaving progresses. Of this last variety there are many styles plain
twined, twilled twined, crossed or divided warp with twined work, wrapped, or
bird-cage weaving, three-strand twining after several methods, and three-strand
braid. Coiled basketry is not weaving, but sewing, and leads up to point lace.
The work is done by sewing or whipping together, in a flat or ascending coil,
foundation of rod, splint, shredded fiber, or grass, and it receives various
names from the kinds of foundation employed and the manner of applying the
stitches; or the sewing may form genuine lace work of interlocking stitches
without continuous foundation. In coiled work in which a foundation is used the
interlocking stitches pass either above, through, or quite under the foundation.
Of coiled basketry there are the following varieties: Coiled work without
foundation; simple interlocking coils with foundation; single-rod foundation;
two-rod foundation; rod-and-splint foundation; two-rod-and-splint foundation;
three-rod foundation; splint foundation; grass-coil foundation; and Fuegian
stitches, identical with the buttonhole stitch. By using choice materials, or by
adding pitch or other resinous substance, baskets were made water-tight for
holding or carrying water for cooking.
The chief use of baskets is as receptacles, hence every activity of the Indians
was associated with this art. Basket work was employed, moreover, in fences,
game drives, weirs, houses, shields, clothing, cradles, for harvesting, and for
the disposal of the dead. This art is interesting, not only on account of the
technical processes employed, the great delicacy of technique, and the infinite
number of purposes that it serves, but on account of the ornamentation, which is
effected by dyeing, using materials of different colors, overlaying, beading,
and plaiting, besides great variety in form and technique. This is always added
in connection with the weaving or sewing, and is fur ther increased with
decorative beads, shells, and feathers. In forms basketry varies from flat
wattling, as in gambling and bread plaques, through trays, bowls, pots, cones,
jars, and cylinders, to the exquisite California art work. The geometric forms
of decussations and stitches gave a mosaic or conventional appearance to all
decoration. The motives in ornamentation were various. No doubt a sense for
beauty in articles of use and a desire to awaken admiration and envy in others
were uppermost. Imitation of pretty objects in nature, such as snake skins, and
designs used by other tribes, were naturally suggested. Such designs pass over
into the realms of symbolism and religion. This is now alive and in full vigor
among the Hopi of Arizona. The Indian women have left the best witness of what
they could do in handiwork and expression in their basketry. In E. United States
almost all of the old-fashioned methods of basket making have passed away, but
by taking impressions of pottery Holmes has been able to reconstruct the ancient
processes, showing that they did not differ in the least from those now extant
in the tribes w. of the Rocky mts. In the southern states the existence of
pliable cane made possible twilled weaving, which may still be found among the
Cherokee and the tribes of Louisiana. The
Athapascan tribes in the interior of
Alaska made coiled basketry from the roots of evergreen trees. The Eskimo about
Bering str. manufactured both woven matting and wallets and coiled basketry of
pliable grass. The Aleutian islanders are now among the most refined artisans in
twined work. South of them the Tlingit and the Haida also practise twined work
only. From British Columbia, beginning with the Salishan tribes, south ward to
the borders of Mexico, the greatest variety of basket making in every style of
weaving is practiced.
Consult Mason, Aboriginal American Basketry, Rep. Nat, Mus. 1902, 1904,
and the bibliography therein; also Barrett in Am. Anthrop., vii, no. 4, 1905;
Dixon in Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist,, xvii, pt. i, 1902; Kroeber in
Univ. Cal. Publ., ii, 1905; Goddard, ibid; Willoughby in Am.
Anthrop., vii, no. 1, 1905. See Art, Arts and Industries, Weaving, (O. T.
M.)
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
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implied .
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906
