Featured 1 of 2- Native Pine Needle Basket? Has some age.

Just got 2 baskets, this one looks to be a pine needle and is Southern U.S.? Just my guess. Please note the colored design, are pine needles dyed? Has an older floral cloth liner sewn into the bottom (it is rigid), perhaps that will help date it or say which tribe made it? The weaving seems pretty tight. Measures about 9" in diameter at the widest part of the middle. What do think? Thanks in advance.

 

I don't see native
don't see pine needle..




BUT...if it is pine needle , it has dried out to a point that I no longer recognize the fibre ....

 

Looks like it might be raffia / palm fiber. Those colors on the bottom are not part of any NA tradition that I know of.

 

I agree that the coil material used in your basket does not look like pine needles. It looks more like a grass that has dried out and fractured. It is also difficult to identify the stitching material, but it might be dyed raffia, as Pottery suggests. The material used on the outside of the bottom looks like some type of commercially woven matting.

The method of construction looks similar to Seminole coiled baskets, which often start with a solid base made from a circle of cardboard covered with palmetto fiber. However, I have not seen an example that used a printed fabric or matting like in your basket. In Seminole baskets, the material used for the coils is a type of "sweetgrass", but pine needles might also be used. The stitching material of choice has been commercial thread (crochet or embroidery thread) in a variety of colors. Raffia, which is an imported material, has not been a typical material used in their baskets. It is more associated with pine needle baskets made by non-Natives.

However, there is an example of a Seminole basket in the National Museum of the American Indian that shows some features similar to yours. It is described in the records as being made of grass and raffia. (I actually think the coil material looks like pine needles, but the stitching does look like raffia.) Although there is not a view of the bottom of the basket, I think I can see a solid palmetto bottom peaking out, but I can't be sure -

https://americanindian.si.edu/collections-search/object/NMAI_215825



So, in the case of your basket, the use of grass as the coiling material might suggest a Native weaver. But the materials used in the base and the stitching would lean more toward a non-Native. There are probably too many variables, and overlapping Native and non-Native traditions, to find a definitive answer as to who made your basket. As for a date, based on the fabric and its similarity to the NMAI basket, I would place it in the 1930s-40s.

 

where's # 2

 

Thank you so much for your research. That helps a lot. Not sure what to think about this one.

 

I will post it now in a separate thread, thanks!

 

Pine needle baskets may be "native to an area" but that does not mean they are "Native American." One should be careful not to "shorten" Native American to "Native." Any one is native to an area, but all of them are not Native American!

Pine needle baskets are traditionally made by non-Native Americans. It's not a traditional material used by any Native American tribe.

 

In her book, Art of the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indians, author Dorothy Downs discusses the coiled baskets made by these groups. Archeological evidence suggests that the coiling technique was not indigenous to the southeast, but may have been introduced through contact with enslaved Africans who brought this method of basket making from West Africa. However introduced, Seminole and Miccosukee weavers adopted it for making popular souvenirs. Information gathered from weavers indicated that they were familiar with the use of both pine needles and sweet grass as coiling materials, and that the tradition had roots as far back as the 19th century.

 

"Traditional" techniques do not include items made in the 19th century, especially when you are talking about basketry, which has a history of close to 10,000 years in the United States (rest of the world, up to 27,000 years ago).

Techniques introduced by foreign basket makers, generally for the souvenir trade, shouldn't be included.

 

That seems a pretty extreme definition of "traditional". Does that mean that any objects made using 19th century trade goods such as glass beads, tin cones, silver coins, machine woven fabrics and dyes, and iron tools should also be excluded as non-traditional? With specific regard to basketry, there is still a debate about whether splint baskets were made before contact or whether it was introduced by colonists from Europe, where it was a well established technique. It was certainly facilitated by the introduction of metal tools used to cut and split wood.

Such a restrictive standard denies that traditions can change over time, and devalues Native Americans ability to innovate and adapt.

 

"Traditional" is an imprecise term, meaning simply "long established". How many generations constitute "long established"? Since pre-history? Preserved in oral tradition? Within living memory?

With regard to Native American objects, it seems it would be better to simply refer to broad dates - pre-contact, post-contact, contemporary/modern, rather than assign implicit value judgements using terms such as "traditional" vs. "non-traditional".