The Cherokee of Oklahoma used buckbrush (Symphoricarpos Orbiculatus) in making fine root runner baskets and it appears after careful study and extensive inquiry, that this type of basket weaving may have originated among the Indians of Oklahoma. This conclusion is based on many years of collecting baskets from Cherokee Indians in every part of the old Cherokee nation. Interviews with older basket-making women were held through interpreters and it was clearly established that basket making from honeysuckle was not known to them or to their mothers or grandmothers who had lived in Georgia and North Carolina before their removal in 1938 to Oklahoma. The only type of weaving known to them before coming to Oklahoma was the cane and oak-splint weaving. From such interviews these facts could be traced back to as early as 1850. They were certain that the earliest baskets made by their grandparents were out of buckbrush and oak splints; no cane or honeysuckle was used in the northern part of the Cherokee nation.
In the Spavinaw hills country of the northern part of the Cherokee nation the Indians used only buckbrush runners as cane does not grow in this section. In the southern part of the nation, in the vicinity of Gore and Weber Falls, cane grows and is used almost exclusively in basket weaving. In the locality of Tahlequah and Stillwell both cane and buckbrush weaving is done. The Cherokee of this region make both a double and single wicker weave basket of buckbrush runners and no foundation is used in either type although each is strong and serviceable. All of their fine root runner baskets (buckbrush) are a wicker type of weave of unexcelled technique. The double weave basket made by Lucy Mouse (shown in the Oklahoma example) is a splendid specimen of fine weaving—a strong durable basket. The dye used in this basket is walnut stain from boiled walnut hulls.
The buckbrush runners are pulled in the fall of the years and after drying two or three weeks are boiled to remove the bark. The fibers remain flexible enough for weaving all winter which is the basket weaving season.
The shapes were formerly market baskets, fruit trays, egg baskets and storage baskets, some of which were used by them as long as fifty years ago. Twenty-five years ago vegetable dyes were used for coloring but today commercial dyes are largely used; the baskets are made, as a rule, for sale, and show considerable white influence.
—Clark Field
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 6, 1882.
I first became interested in the art work of the Indians while working as a reporter for an Oklahoma daily newspaper in 1900, at which time I covered the opening for settlement of the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Indian reservations in southwest Oklahoma. After two years of study (1903-1904) at the University of Oklahoma, I became a traveling salesman and remained in that profession until 1917 when I went into business for myself (retired from business in 1957). About 1918 I became actively interested in Indian pottery and basketry and started my collections. Since that time, Mrs. Field, my daughter Dorothy Field Maxwell (Mrs. Gilbert S.), and I have traveled more than one hundred and twenty five thousand miles collecting in the United States, Canada, Alaska, Mexico, Central and South America.
To date (1964) we have spent 46 years in trying to collect authentic specimens of baskets made for actual use by all basket-making tribes (no tourist specimens are included). Intent upon maintaining the highest possible quality throughout the collection, I have always insisted upon acquiring the finest representative basket for its particular tribe or use.
The collection is completely catalogued and photographed and has been given to the Philbrook Art Center of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where it is on exhibition. The collection has been rated by members of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and by members of other museums, as the most comprehensive in the United States for its beauty of specimens and unusual method of display.