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Baskets
The following data is extracted from The Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb, St. Tammay Parish, Louisiana.
The Choctaw are excellent basket makers, although their work at the present time is greatly inferior to that of a generation ago. The best baskets are made of narrow strips of cane, Arundinaria macrosperma (Choctaw, uske), though now, at Bayou Lacomb, they are using the stems of palmetto, Serrenoa serrulata (Choctaw, tala), as cane is no longer found near-by, and to obtain it a journey has to be made to Pearl river, some fifteen or twenty miles away.
The baskets now made, with few exceptions, are very crude and rather poorly formed. Brilliant aniline dyes are used in the place of the more subdued native colors. Large numbers of small baskets provided with handles are made and exchanged in the stores of the near-by towns for
various goods; these are purchased by strangers and taken away as examples of native art.
a The History of Carolina, London, 1714; reprint, 338, Raleigh, 1860.
b James Adair, History of the American Indians… 421, London, 1775.
Source: The Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb, St. Tammay Parish, Louisiana
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