In this innovative study, Sarah Hill illuminates the history of
Southeastern Cherokee women by examining changes in their basketry.
Based in tradition and made from locally gathered materials, baskets
evoke the lives and landscapes of their makers. Incorporating written,
woven, and spoken records, Hill demonstrates that changes in Cherokee
basketry signal important transformations in Cherokee culture. Over the
course of three centuries, Cherokees developed four major basketry
traditions, each based on a different material - rivercane, white oak,
honeysuckle, and maple. Hill traces how the incorporation of each new
material occurred in the context of lived experience, ecological
processes, social conditions, economic circumstances, and historical
eras. She demonstrates that while the inclusion of new materials from
the time of the Cherokee removal into the present day testifies to deep
levels of social and ecological change, the retention of old materials
suggests the persistence of certain values, customs, and concepts in
Cherokee life. Drawing on such diverse sources as Cherokee myths,
government documents, museum collections, store records, interviews with
contemporary Cherokee weavers, and firsthand accounts by travelers,
traders, and missionaries, Hill presents Cherokee women as shapers and
subjects of change.