![]() Late 1500s drawing of a Virginia Native carrying fish by John White: (Church 1975) |
Basket and Bag Weaving in the Northeast |
European documents dating to the 17th century refer frequently to woven baskets and bags of Native Americans. All groups of Native Americans in the northeast had some construct of basketry, birch bark containers being perhaps the most common expression (Ritzenthaler & Ritzenthaler 1970: 79-80). Early historic European accounts often do not distinguish between rigid baskets and the flexible bags of the Native Americans. All types of woven containers, in fact, may have been generically referred to, by European observers, as "baskets" despite differences in the materials or construction techniques employed. It is wise to keep in mind while reviewing early historic accounts, that even though, today, we generally tend to think of "baskets" as rigid splint-woven containers, 400 years ago the term "basket" more aptly referred to any open container, including flexible bags and folded birch bark vessels.
Woven Baskets
Early historic European accounts generally describe baskets in the context of a wigwam, or buried baskets storing foodstuffs for later use by Native Americans. In 1643 Roger Williams (1973: 121) remarks of a Narragansett Wigwam that "In steed of shelves, they have severall baskets, wherein they put all their householdstuffe." In the northeast, storage baskets were constructed from a variety of materials including hemp, rushes or bents, maize husks, silk (or sweet) grass, tree bark, and conceivably even horse-shoe crab shells (Gookin 1970: 16; citing Mourt in Heath 1986: 29; de Rasieres 1967: 107, 108).
Gookin remarks in 1674: From the tree where the bark grows, they make several sorts of baskets, great and small. Some will hold four bushels, or more; and so downward to a pint. In their baskets they put their provisions. Some of their baskets are made of rushes; some, of bents; others, of maize husks; others, a kind of silk grass; others, of a kind of wild hemp; and some, of barks of trees; many of them, very neat and artificial, with the portraitures of birds, beats, fishes and flowers, upon them in colors. [Gookin 1970: 16]
Early historic accounts in New England indicate variable sizes and shapes for woven storage baskets (citing Mourt in Heath 1986: 22, 29; Wood 1865: 107-108). Some quite small as Wood (1865: 107-108) indicates in 1634, "these baskets be of all sizes from a quart to a quarter, in which they carry their luggage", and other baskets larger as Mourt (in Heath 1986: 22) describes in 1622, "with some thirty-six goodly ears of corn, some yellow, and some red, and others mixed with blue, which was a very goodly sight."
![]() Twined cornhusk bottle Turnbaugh & Turnbaugh 1986 |
European colonists like Mourt in 1622 were very intrigued with the colors and designs applied or woven into baskets (in Heath 1986: 22, 29). Basket materials were generally dyed before they were woven together, and in weaving the strands together, a design was produced. In other cases the colored designs are embroidered onto the surface of a basket after it was constructed. Mourt (in Heath 1986: 29), in 1622, mentions colors of black and white. Red wool is used in a Narragansett twined basket (Simmons: 1978: 192). Josselyn's (in Lindholdt 1988: 101-102) narrative from the 1600's refers to several colors (black, blue, red and yellow) used to dye and decorate baskets, bags and mats as well as to dye porcupine quills used in bag weaving. Gookin (1970: 16) describes designs of ëbirds, beasts, fishes and flowers in colors placed upon basketsí in his collections from 1674. The baskets mentioned in these accounts seem to refer to more realistic animal and floral designs (Gookin 1970: 16; Wood 1865: 107), unlike the surviving Mohegan and Narragansett twined bags from the 17th century (Simmons: 1978: 192).
Baskets were often used to store food which was harvested by the Native Americans and then put up for later use. In 1622, Mourt (in Heath 1986: 22, 29, 34, 65) makes numerous references to the contents of these storage baskets, including but surely not limited to: corn, roasted crab, fishes, pieces of fish (including broiled herring and other dried shell fish) and parched acorns.
![]() Sifting Basket Speck 1915 |
Another container worthy of mention was apparently a small basket for parched corn meal to be used as an instant food reserve while traveling (Gookin 1970: 15). Roger Williams (1973: 100) writes in 1643: "I have travelled with neere 200. of them at once, neere 100. miles through the woods, every man carrying a little Basket of this [Nokehick] at his back, and sometimes in a hollow Leather Girdle about his middle, sufficient for a man three or foure daies." Earlier in 1634, William Wood (1865: 76) notes that meals of parched corn while traveling consisted of "thrice three spoonefuls a day, dividing it into three meales." This figure of nine spoonfuls a day for three or four days, suggests this basket must have held one or two cups of corn meal.
![]() Potawatomi coiled sweetgrass basket Turnbaugh & Turnbaugh 1986 |
Wicker-type baskets are also mentioned by Ritzenthaler & Ritzenthaler (1970: 79-80) in their report of the Great Lakes Region. In this area wicker baskets were constructed (though to a limited degree) of willow stems, cedar roots, or basswood bark. A form of wicker baskets may also have been woven by more southerly tribes, indicated in a 1500's drawing by John White (Church 1975: 93), showing North Carolina Native Americans cooking fish. One of the Native Americans portrayed in this drawing carries a twined basket on his back that may be similar to the wicker baskets referred to by Ritzenthaler & Ritzenthaler (1970: 79-80).
Woven Bags
Native Americans in 17th century New England wove bags for carrying and storing items. Josselyn (in Lindholdt 1988: 93) remarks in 1674 that Natives used these bags or sacks to store corn powder, "which they make use of when stormie weather or the like will not suffer them to look out for their food." Roger Williams (1973: 121) suggests in 1643 that these bags were impressively large: "they have some great bags or sacks made of Hempe, which will hold five or sixe bushells". Woven hemp bags (likely made of dogbane, Apocynum cannabinum, also called ëIndian Hempí) are also mentioned by de Vries (1967: 219) between 1633 and 1655, "and the savages use a kind of hemp, which they understand making up, much stronger than ours is, and for every purpose, such as notassen, (which are their sacks, and in which they carry everything);". De Vries (1967: 219) also notes that Native Americans made a "linen" out of hemp.
![]() Penobscot man with basswood hunting bag Speck 1976 |
![]() Yarn bag weaving Chippewa Ritzenthaler & Ritzenthaler 1970 |
In addition to tightly woven storage and carrying bags, European accounts from northern New England indicate that open-weave rectangular bags, hulling bags, and bags made of corn husk were also woven (Anonymous 1967: 301; Ritzenthaler & Ritzenthaler 1970: 76). Slightly different techniques were used to weave these bags. In making thse rectangular basswood bags, a "pair of twisted basswood cords were twined around one or two warp strands in rows about a half inch apart" (Ritzenthaler & Ritzenthaler 1970: 76). In 1650, a European account of New Netherland describes that when purchasing corn from the Native Americans with wampum, the corn was often measured in sacks most likely made from husks (Anonymous 1967: 301).
![]() Wamapanoag bag Open twined zigzag warp Turnbaugh & Turnbaugh 1986 |
![]() Woven bags of Menomini, Chippewa & Potawatomi Ritzenthaler & Ritzenthaler 1970 |
Two examples of 17th century hemp and basswood bags have survived the years intact. The bags are small storage bags which were probably used to hold corn powder (Nohicake) or other household supplies. Both bags are made using a two-strand twined weft method, but the materials and decorative techniques used are different.
![]() Mohegan Twined Bag McMullen & Handsman 1987 |
![]() Narragansett Twined Bag Simmons 1978 |
![]() Reconstructed design of Narragansett bag by Prindle 2000 |
Sections of 17th century bags have also been found by William Simmons (1970: 97), an archaeologist in southern New England. At the West Ferry cemetery, two adult Narragansett women were found buried with bast textile fragments identified as "plain twine weave". On fragment consisted of warp that was loose and braided while the weft of the textile was a two-strand sloping cord. This fragment may be the remains of an open weave bag (Simmons 1970: 97).
Splint Work and Basket Stamping:
Historians argue whether or not prepared ash splint basketry was practiced by the Pequot, Mohegan, Niantic and other tribes of southern New England in 1600. Many maintain that this splint basketry was introduced later in the historic period by Swedes on the Delaware River (citing Brasser in Snow 1980: 58). The materials used in Native splint basketry include brown (or black) ash and white oak (Speck 1915: 2). Sweet grass (often braided first), and in much later historic times twisted Hong Kong grass, were sometimes woven over ash splints warps. Two types of splint baskets were historically woven by Native Americans in southern New England, checker-work and a round "gizzard" or mellon-shaped basket generally made of oak (Speck 1915: 3).
![]() Seneca Basket Fragments dating to the late 1600s Handsman & McMullen 1978 |
![]() Passamaquoddy crooked knife Erickson 1978 |
![]() Penobscot Hafted Beaver Incisors Crooked knife Prototypes Snow 1980 |
![]() Penobscot Splint guages Speck 1976 |
"The introduction of typographic ornamentation in the basketry had its beginning among Indian converts of New England in the zone of influence radiating from John Eliot's mission stations active between 1650 and 1658. The experience gained by the Indian converts who printed the Natick Bible (1664) can be considered in retrospect as the source of a stimulus in figure printing, diffusing from the whites to semi-acculturated Indians of eastern Massachusetts" (Speck 1947: 33).
Despite the almost exclusive confinement of block-stamp decoration to splint basketry in the late historic period, Speck (1947: 33) indicates: "The use of block stamps as mediums of designing arose in some center of the Eastern Woodlands culture area of the United States as an independent feature of native decorative art."
Another ornamental feature of splint basketry which seems to preserve earlier forms of aboriginal art is the Schagticoke use of the 'curlicue' or porcupine twist. "The curlicue consists of a splint run over one of the warp splints and twisted between two alternate standards, thus making a sort of twisted imbrications" (Speck 1915: 6). The Schagticoke associate the embellishment with the form of a shell and claim the technique to be a native feature and, since it is found in the oldest baskets from the region, there seems little doubt that it is aboriginal in origin (Speck 1915: 6).
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© 1994-2000 Tara Prindle.