I don’t know of a single adult Cherokee man or woman who is not a craftsperson of one sort or another. It’s an amazing culture in many ways, but they are particularly distinguished as craftspeople. Stone carvings, wood carvings, basketry, jewelry, pottery ... you name it, and there’s someone on the Qualla Boundry or outlying Cherokee lands here in Western North Carolina who does it.

Basketry is certainly one of their specialties. As a naturalist, I have for many years been interested in the materials the Cherokees use to make splints and dyes. I recently ran across a title on my bookshelves that told me a lot about these matters that I hadn’t previously known or thought through.

I purchased a copy of Sarah H. Hill’s Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry back in 1997 when it was first published by the University of North Carolina Press. It’s not unusual for me to take a few years in getting around to actually reading a book, but I want it handy when I’m ready.

A blurb on the back cover describes Hill as “an independent scholar who lives in Atlanta. A native of Georgia, she received her Ph.D in American studies from Emory University.” Despite the title, her book is, in fact, a cultural history of the Cherokees that utilizes their traditional and contemporary basketry as a narrative thread. I won’t have the opportunity here to tell you exactly how well written and thought provoking Weaving New Worlds is - just take my word for it and buy this book if you have an interest in either Cherokee culture or the utilitarian objects and crafts of the Southern Appalachians.

Hill writes: “Woven goods - baskets and mats - document what women did, when, and how. They illuminate the work of women who transformed the environments that produced materials for basketry. They point to women’s roles in ceremonial, subsistence, and exchange systems. As objects created and utilized by women, baskets and mats conserved and conveyed their concepts, ideas, experience, and expertise. They asserted women’s cultural identity and reflected their values.”

In regard to “reflecting their values,” one can note that the quality of Cherokee basketry has not diminished one iota through thousands of years of manufacture down to 2001.

The Cherokees have traditionally preferred to make baskets from either river cane or white oak splints. They will use other materials, of course, but those two are their favorites. I have seen old photos of Cherokees coming down the Tuckaseigeee River from the Qualla Boundary (Cherokee) as far as Bryson City in canoes to gather cane. Most people don’t realize it, but up until the early 20th century sizable canebrakes existed here in the mountains.

That wouldn’t be feasible today because there is very little cane to be found - and what can be found is generally of poor quality. Ironically, the Cherokees - masters of cane - are themselves having to venture far afield into other states to locate suitable cane for their baskets, mats and flutes.

Hill notes that cane can be harvested any time of the year and is then soaked in a stream to keep it fresh. Preparation includes trimming the leaves, smoothing rough joints, and splitting each stalk into four to eight sticks. An expert “can split a stalk in less than five minutes.”

The trickiest part comes when the outer cortex of the stick is painstakingly separated from the inner core with a knife. If this procedure is successful, the process yields a thin, pliable section of inner core called a splint.

Hill writes: “Around her feet, long segments of discarded cores pile up, filling the air with a fresh, pungent odor. The work continues hour after hour, the rhythmic strokes of the weaver’s hands keeping time with the sounds of the splitting cane.”

Next the inner side of each splint is tediously scraped again and again so as to remove all vestiges of pith fibers. The prepared splints are then rolled into circular bundles that are secured with ties. They are ready for the dying process.

I had always supposed the Cherokees had been using white oak as a source for splints since they evolved as a distinctive culture a thousand or so years ago. I learned in Hill’s book that it was the European settlers who introduced the Cherokees to white oak baskets. Her research indicates that “Even though Cherokees and whites lived in close proximity and traded with each other for two centuries before the removal (1838), no evidence indicates that Cherokee weavers fully incorporated white oak into their basketry traditions prior to the nineteenth century.”

While the making of baskets from cane was the strict providence of the women, Cherokee men frequently made baskets from white oak. Whether male or female, they favor white oak (Quercus alba) saplings. Some think those growing on north-facing slopes are best ... some think that white oak cut during a full moon is no good ... they feel each one, testing its size, shape, and texture ... some take a chip out to see what’s going on inside ... some don’t.

The weaver strips off the bark of a fresh cut white oak sapling and then “busts up” the core; that is, he or she “splits the core in half with a mallet and wedge, then quarters it the same way.” This separates the “light early wood formed in the spring from the denser late wood that grows in summer.” Some prefer splints cut from the light outer wood, others go for the denser heartwood.

Hill writes: “Sitting and turning the knife blade down toward her lap, the weaver repeatedly scrapes the splints until they are thin, flexible, and uniform. Slender, fragrant white oak peelings cling to her clothing and curl up on the ground around her.”

The splints are then cut into widths with scissors. Utilitarian baskets require wide, thick splints throughout. Decorative trade baskets feature “splints of different widths, which, woven together, create a design.” At any rate, they are now, like the bundles of cane splints, ready for the dye pot, a cauldron of boiling water often situated oven an open fire in the yard but also sometimes in the kitchen over a modern cook stove. Hill mentions a number of dyes used by the Cherokees, but in my experience they have favored shrub yellowroot for yellow, bloodroot for orange-red, black walnut for brown, and butternut walnut for black. The pulped rootstock is always used from yellowroot and bloodroot. So as not to kill the walnut trees, however, they often use the bark or hulls instead of the rootstock.

Shrub yellowroot grows along most streams here in the mountains. The leafy tops of the plant resemble carrot tops. Bloodroot is surely one of most widely admired wildflowers in the eastern United States. The first part of its scientific name (“Sanguinaria”) means “bleeding,” in reference to the peculiar red juice that oozes from the rootstock when broken. (Other members of the poppy family also produce this acrid fluid, which contains various akaloids.) Black walnut is found throughout the lower elevations; however, it’s little cousin the butternut walnut (sometimes called white walnut) is becoming scarce due to an invasive fungus.

The Cherokees are dye-masters. They can manipulate the colors to obtain they exact shades they desire by the amount of pulp utilized, the source of the pulp (root, bark, leaf, or husk), and by the amount of time the splints are left in the boiling pot. Mordants are reactive agents used to fix or set coloring matter in textiles, leather, basket splints, or whatever. Hill reports that the Cherokee weavers “may use soda, alum, or copper as a mordant. Some remember that their mothers added old iron froes, ax heads, or nails to walnut dye pots.” I have been told by several Cherokee basketmakers that ashes and urine were also utilized.

I like the way Hill concludes this wonderful study of the Cherokee baskets and their makers. She writes: “One cool fall morning as I stood studying a basket display in the (Qualla) co-op, an indignant white woman stalked up, grasping tightly in her hand a medium-sized white oak wastebasket. The basket was dyed with bloodroot and walnut hulls and woven with splints that had been peeled, scraped, cut, and trimmed to three different sizes. Its smooth, narrow base and double rim were hand carved from white oak; two rows of luminous maple curls twisted uniformly on and off the surface. She shook the basket angrily and exclaimed, `Have you seen the prices on these baskets? Don’t they know we’re tourists! I wish I had bought those baskets on the South Carolina coast!’ There was no adequate response. My surprise has never been what baskets cost in the present, but rather, what they cost in the past. ‘Yes,’ I replied to the visitor to the Cherokee reservation, ‘Yes, I feel sure they know we’re tourists.’”

(George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com

 

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