HISTORY

A HISTORY OF WABANAKI BASKET MAKING

Basket making, one of the oldest forms of art, has been practiced by Maine's Penobscot, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Maliseet people, collectively known as the Wabanaki, or "People of the Dawn," for hundreds of years. Thus, basket making is both an integral part of Wabanaki tradition and culture, as well as a means of handing down their traditions through the generations.

 

While their earliest baskets were utilitarian work baskets, used in food preparation, fishing, and gathering, by the mid-1800s the Wabanaki gradually added a new genre of basket making, the "fancy basket." These more decorative and ornamented, yet also utilitarian, baskets, made with varied colors and weaves and in innumerable shapes, were highly sought by the affluent tourists and "rusticators" who flocked to the resort areas of Maine, in part as avid collectors of these artworks. During these Victorian times, the Wabanaki established  encampments in such Maine resort areas as Bar Harbor, Poland Springs, and Belgrade Lakes, to sell their highly desirable artworks to these visitors, an exchange which proved to be an extremely positive cross-cultural transaction.

 

While signing one's basket did not begin until the 1980s, which makes it difficult to identify the basket maker of early baskets, certain distinctive traits, such as unusual types of weaves associated with specific families of weavers, can sometimes help identify the basket maker after this time period, as can the recollection of a member of a younger generation of the family. Variations in styles of basket making over time can help in dating baskets.

 

Wabanaki basket makers did not, as other New England basket makers had, produce baskets for the wholesale market and therefore their baskets remained highly varied and original, ranging from the exuberant to the refined and elegant. The frequent exchange of ideas between Wabanaki basket makers also enhanced the variety and innovation in their art. Basket making among the Wabanaki was and is an intergenerational cultural attribute which binds the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Penobscot people together in a shared tradition. Wabanaki baskets are recognized as a highly prized art form and a source of fascination for their endless variety and their inherent beauty.