"Cownose" Basket with Handle

Label

The Choctaw women who wove these baskets used river cane, a semi-aquatic grass cultivated along riverbanks. Several Native American tribes from the southeastern United States tended these grasses, caring for them and nurturing them, to weave baskets used within their communities and traded with their neighbors.

When the Choctaw were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), they brought these traditions with them and cultivated river cane along the banks of Oklahoma’s rivers. Using a double-weave structure, essentially weaving one basket into another, some highly skilled women wove baskets so tightly that they could even hold water.

From the 2023 exhibition Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, curated by Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

First Year Student Enrichment Program - Cultures, Identities and Belongings, Francine A'Ness, Summer 2023

Anthropology 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Fall 2023

Anthropology 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Fall 2023

Art History 40.01, American Art and Identity, Mary Coffey, Fall 2023

Creative Writing 10.02, Writing and Reading Fiction, Katherine Crouch, Fall 2023

Geography 11.01, Qualitative Methods, Emma Colven, Fall 2023

Geography 2.01, Introduction to Human Geography, Coleen Fox, Fall 2023

Geography 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Fall 2023

English 30.01, African and African American Studies 34.01, Early Black American LIterature, Michael Chaney, Winter 2024

Writing 5.06, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Winter 2024

Writing 5.07, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Winter 2024

Exhibition History

Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, Israel Sack Gallery and the Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 29, 2023-December 14, 2023.

Provenance

Captain Herbert L. Shuttleworth II (1913-2010, Class of 1935), Amsterdam, New York; given to present collection, 1943.

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