Vintage Baskets - Centuries Old Tradition

Vintage baskets reveal traditional stories – where indigenous worldviews of the distant past are experienced through the lens of basket weaving. Personal and cultural histories as visual narratives are woven into each basket with skill and amazing talent.

Turn of the century "Golden Years" of Basket making

Native basket making in the Northeast Woodlands is centuries old. The Wabanaki tribes (Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Maliseet, and Micmac) of Maine and other northeastern tribal artists were expert weavers. Recognizing the need to participate in the market economy of the colonial culture, Native basket weavers took advantage of the growing interest in Native American culture to sell or trade their baskets.

Their lands and resources had diminished since colonial settlement, causing a sudden change in their cultural way of life toward a heavier reliance on European market goods. Selling or trading baskets and other souvenir art to Victorian travelers and summer residents of the Maine and New England Coast became a source of financial survival to feed and provide for their families. In the mid to late 1800s and turn of the century era, many, if not all, families on the reservations in the Northeast were making baskets for sale or trade in the new colonial cash economy. There were few other earned income resources for Native people of this time. In fact, many could not speak English at all or very well and had little or no formal education to read or write. (This was only 100-170 years ago)

At the turn of the century in New England, the European Romantic movement inspired many wealthy tourists and summer visitors to seek out Native baskets and other crafts to purchase as souvenirs to take home with them. This era is considered to be the “golden years” of Native American basket collecting where wealthy visitors to the New England coastal resorts eagerly sought to purchase baskets of Native artisans and sales were plentiful. Many visitors were seeking ways to get “back to nature” and away from the squalid city conditions of urban life. They often romanticized the ideal vision of Native people as “pure and untouched” by the city life of that period filled with smog, industrial pollutions, and diseases. The popular resorts continued to be a prosperous gathering place for many Native weavers and artists only too willing to supply the demand for “natural” products made by a “pure”  race of “disappearing” Indians. Although the romanticized vision of Native people was a myth, it led to cash sales of baskets for Native weavers. The weavers produced “fancy baskets” for a Victorian market who loved intricate “fancy” work and bright colors.

Basket Sales Declined - early 1900s

In the early 1900s as wars, the Great Depression, and other socio-economic changes took place, sales of baskets began to decline in the Northeastern Woodlands. Weavers continued to travel and sell at coastal areas into the mid 20th century, and continued to sell in shops on reservations or other areas, but sales were minimal. However, some basket makers refused to give up and continued the traditional practice of weaving, despite the many challenges they faced with material shortages and low prices (see my mother, Mary Mitchell Gabriel, Passamaquoddy weaver and NEA Fellowship Award winner). My grandmother and aunts also actively participated in and advocated for the preservation of the traditional art of basket weaving, along with a few other tribal elders. Their hard labor and long hours have paid off in preserving an important tribal tradition that would have been lost without their efforts. They were the great mothers and grandmothers who carried the tradition of fancy basket making forward. Recently, a revitalization of basket making has taken place in some areas of the Northeast (Wabanaki tribes, for example) since the late 20th century, fostering a new strength to preserve the indigenous tradition for future generations.

References

McMullen, Ann and Russell G. Handsman, eds. A Key into the Language of Woodsplint Baskets. Washington: American Indian Archaeological Inst., 1987.

Porter, Frank W. “American Indian Baskets in The Middle Atlantic Region: Material Survival and Changing Function.” Material Culture 17, no. 1 (1985): 25-45.  

Porter, Frank W. Native American Basketry: An Annotated Bibliography. Intro. New York: Greenwood Press, 1947.

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