The study to follow contributes a detail of existing knowledge of the art-crafts of the Cherokee. As such it will prove to be another source reference to the Cherokee way of life in art and its expression in concrete form. The utilities have been and still are to Indians a means of finding outlet for their aesthetic urges. Art and crafts are merged in the output. Other fields lie open for further attempts to perform its functions in national life by issuing successive publications dealing with its cultural material, thus laying foundations for that basic teaching we fondly call Americanism.
FRANK G. SPECK Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1952
ROOT RUNNER BASKETRY
The association of root-runner basket forms in America would show a number of instances of use of a “Rod” as a one rod foundation for coiled baskets occurring originally in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and on the plains.[1] This technologically simple form of basket building material has implications bearing upon the age and area theory that challenges attention on a wider scale. Apart from the coiling process, a single rod construction appears in the Southeast in wicker work. What conclusions a broader study of single rod basketry (to which class the root runner series belongs) in any of its constructional forms, whether in coiling or wicker work, would lead to is quite beyond the purpose of this article.
It is the intent of the writer to record a simple phase of basketry technique in the southern middle Atlantic slope and the northern part of the south and southeast area, as it applies to the Cherokee of the North Carolina highlands and of Oklahoma. In these areal habitats the two subdivisions of the tribe make use of three diverse plant types, the use of which in basketry construction in some districts does not overlap or coincide. In Carolina an earlier root-runner style has either passed out of memory or never existed among the Cherokee Indians, but came in later through acculturative changes. As far as has been ascertained, all fine root runner fibers used in the making of Indian baskets belong to two family groups, the botanical names of which are Caprifoliceae and Crataegus.
To the first family group belong:
Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera Japonica) A vine introduced into America from Asia around 1906.[2] Buckbrush (Symphoricarpos Orbiculatus) Also called Indian Currant and Coral Berry.
To the second family belong:
Wild Hawthorne (Crataegus Crus Galli) The Yuki Indians of California made a basket out of the stems of a native honeysuckle (Lonicera Interrupta). It, however does not have fine root runners.[3]