Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry

by Sarah H. Hill

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. Indeed, as Weaving New Worlds reveals, the stories of Cherokee baskets and the women who weave them are intertwined and inseparable. 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 explores how the addition of each new material occurred in the context of lived experience, ecological processes, social conditions, economic circumstances, and historical eras. Incorporating insights from written sources, interviews with contemporary Cherokee weavers, and a close examination of the baskets themselves, she presents Cherokee women as shapers and subjects of change. Even in the face of cultural assault and environmental loss, she argues, Cherokee women have continued to take what they have to make what they need, literally and metaphorically weaving new worlds from old.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Native American

440 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 1997

Reviews

[America Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Likely the best book every written about Cherokee art history. Hill sets the bar for quality scholarship and explores many topics related to her focus of Eastern Cherokee basketry, which she contextualizes in Cherokee society and history.

[Amy Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

What strong women! I found their struggle for survival to be heartbreaking at times. The artistry and symbolism in their basketry is inspiring.

[Jay Shelat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wonderfully wise in parts but terribly boring in most.

[Aia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and educational book. I love how the author uses the symbolism of Cherokee women weaving baskets and relates it to them being interwoven into matrilineal Cherokee society. At times, it seems to stray from the main thesis as there is a lot of background content, but it is a good read nonetheless.

[Derek Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I originally thought "basketweaving?" This was a great introspective into the cultural history and attempted cultural annihilation of the Native people.