Southeastern Basketry

The Southeastern Indians Charles Hudson wrote in The Southeastern Indians that the Indians were good basketmakers. From de Soto onward, we have descriptions of baskets and mats woven with pleasing angular and curvilinear geometric designs. A few pieces of basketry have been recovered from archaeological sites.

The Southeastern Indians generally wove by twilling. They did use some grass and bark but their favorite material was thin pieces of the outer covering of cane. Some of these strips were dyed black, red, or brown and used along with natural strips to produce angular and curvilinear designs.

They made a variety of baskets, including small baskets with handles, sieves and fanners for processing hominy meal; large burden baskets with flared openings; small and large hampers, often with tightly fitting covers; and small baskets whose bottoms came down to a point, these being somewhat reminiscent of the pointed pouches in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. They also twilled large cane mats, usually measuring about five feet by six feet. They used these mats for bedding, for carpeting, to cover the seats in the square ground, to cover the walls and roofs of their houses, to wrap the bodies of their dead for burial, and many other purposes.

Southeastern Indians made great use of geometric design motifs. In the historic period they used two basic styles of geometric design, the Eastern and the Western. The Eastern geometric style, frequently seen in historic Creek, Seminole, and Yuchi woven textiles, uses strings of simple diamonds, V's and W's. Florida Seminoles use the diamond design to represent the rattlesnake. The geometric style used by Indians in the western part of the Southeast employed two types of circle motifs, both of which are rendered on a plain background. The first, the double scroll, consists of two scrolls or circles connected by a diagonal line. The other motif consists of rosettes or circles spaced on a panel, with the circles enclosed in diamonds or alternated with X's and other figures. These designs appear on finger woven textiles

Books on Southeastern Indian Weaving: Choctaw Diagonal Twill Plaiting, A Workshop with Claude Medford, Jr., by Judith Olney Cane and Palmetto Basketry of the Choctaws of St. Tammany Parish, by Thomas A. Colvin Basketry of the Southeastern Indian, edited by Marshall Gettys Indian Baskets, by Sara Peabody Turnbaugh and William Turnbaugh Thomas A. Colvin's booklet includes information from Bushnell's anthropological study in 1909 of a family group, which settled at Bayou Lacombe. Bushnell. He quoted Bushnell: "Until a few years ago, there were more than a hundred Choctaw in the vicinity of Bayou Lamcomb; but by Act of Congress of July 20, 1902, they were persuaded to remove to Indian Territory, and receive an allotment of land." This family group studied by Bushnell had escaped and settled at their ancestral homeland. Colvin wrote, "By the 1930's Mathilde was the last Choctaw making baskets in Lacombe. In this tiny Choctaw enclave, she was the end of an unbroken line of cultural and hereditary skills and knowledge." In the remaining forty five years of her life, she succeeded in training only two students." Colvin wrote that several things contributed then and now to the decline of basket weaving. Two-thirds of the time required to make a basket is spent in locating the growing material and processing the straws and the profit in selling them is insignificant. Thomas Colvin became Mathilde's student in 1963. Some of the baskets in this booklet are his.

Peggy Sanders Brennan, Cherokee, August 3, 2008

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