The Rappahannock Indians of Virginia make a basket of Japanese honeysuckle root runners of a wicker type weave which is crude in weaving technique in comparison with baskets from North Carolina. (Rappahannock of Virginia.) Quoting Dr. Speck, “The art was revived by some of the women in 1922, when the Indian Association was formed. Susie and Lizzie Nelson, old Bob Nelson and other Rappahannock Indians made these baskets at that time. Chief Otto Nelson, his wife Susie, and Lizzie Nelson remember that when they were young about 1890, their grandmother Sallie Ronnie, who was then about 60 years old, had a honeysuckle sewing basket shaped like an oval bowl, similar in weave to the baskets mentioned above.
“There is a native local, variety of Red Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) in Virginia which is not a ground runner but clings for six feet or so to trees and fences; it is finer stemmed than the Japanese variety and Indian women of the Rappahannock tribe have agreed to weave with it. All honeysuckle runners are kept soaked in water to preserve their pliability for weaving. They can be gathered and woven at any time of the year if treated in this manner.”
As far as known no other fine root runner is used for basket weaving by the Indians of this state, although other fine root runners such as Devil’s Shoestring and London Pride grow there. Comments on honeysuckle wicker-weave baskets among the Mattaponi Indians of Virginia are made by Dr. Frank Speck in his book “At Mattaponi,” in which he speaks of the girls making baskets of honeysuckle stems, meticulously neat and with a technique suspiciously European in detail. We cannot be too sure that something like this did not exist before as many references to baskets of various forms made in the early days are encountered.[4] The Pamunkey Tribe, living on a reservation ten miles south of Mattaponi, have used honeysuckle runners for over twenty years. In both bands the details of form and weave are identical, and the historical circumstances may also be.
ROOT RUNNER BASKETS IN NORTH CAROLINA
The Cherokee Indians of North Carolina used Japanese honeysuckle in basket weaving as early as 1880, when it was introduced by a Cherokee woman named Arizona Blankenship who had been educated at Hampton Institute, Virginia. It is interesting to note that the Cherokee Agency Indian School was founded at Cherokee, North Carolina, that same year.
In January, 1943, Dr. Speck made an extensive trip into the hill country around Cherokee, North Carolina, visiting the old conservative Cherokee Indians of that region. He learned from the old people that honeysuckle basket weaving was not an original Cherokee Indian art. Making inquiry into their history of basket weaving, he could find no evidence of their use of hawthorne (Crataegus) although it is native to that state, or any historical evidence of the use of any other fine root runners. It is possible, of course, that the Hawthorne runners could have been used by other Indian bands in other parts of the state but so far it is not known, notwithstanding the fact Dr. Speck has spent many years of study of Cherokee Indian basketry in North Carolina.[5] Cane and oak splints were used chiefly by the Cherokee in basket weaving and the use of Japanese honeysuckle was undoubtedly a later addition to their culture. An illustration of one of the earliest known types of honeysuckle weave is shown in the Cherokee of North Carolina plate. This basket has no foundation to support the fine root runner fibers although most of their baskets made of honeysuckle runners do have foundations of oak splints. As far as is known no double weaving of fine root runner baskets was done by the Cherokee of this state.
ROOT RUNNER BASKETS IN OKLAHOMA
