SwANi-ON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 605 



Speck has the following from the Creek Indians of Taskigi town : 



Baskets of various shapes were made of cane and hickory splints for house- 

 hold use. The favorite technique in basketry was the twilled. The weaving 

 showed some diversity in details, produced by allowing the woof strands to 

 pass over one, two, three, and frequently four warp strands at a time. 

 Decoration on baskets, so they say, was rare, but when desired was obtained 

 by manipulating varicolored splints in the woof. The splints were shaved 

 from the rind of the cane. This gave a smooth glossy surface on one side 

 which was turned outward in weaving. The commonest basket shape had the 

 bottom quite flat and wide with the wall tapering slightly inward toward the 

 top. Sieves of open twilled work were made for sifting pounded corn. Twilled 

 mats of cane were formerly made, but are not now to be seen. (Speck, 1907, p. 

 109.) 



Basket making among the Yuchi is treated at length by the same 

 writer in his report on that tribe (Speck, 1909, pp. 31-34). 



Sixty years ago the Florida Seminole made "from the swamp cane, 

 and sometimes from the covering of the stalk of the fan palmetto. . . . 

 flat baskets and sieves for domestic service" (MacCauley, 1887, p. 517) . 



Jackson Lewis, my oldest and in many respects my best Creek 

 informant, who belonged originally to the Hitchiti town among the 

 Lower Creeks and was born before the removal of his family to the 

 West, gave me the following description of the manufacture of cane 

 baskets as observed by him : 



They first selected canes about as large as one's finger or perhaps 

 a bit larger and split them up into several pieces, after which they 

 stripped the outside bark from each. This was known as "stripping 

 the cane" and it was usually done in the canebrake itself, the stripped 

 cane being afterward made into bundles and carried home. Before 

 using they were soaked in warm water. The big hampers were 

 generally made with a simpler weave, but w^ith heavier borders. 



When colors were to be used, they dyed the requisite number of 

 strips in advance. The bark of the black walnut was used when 

 they wanted a black dye. A color between red and brown was fur- 

 nished by boiling the roots of a plant called tale'wa or tali'wa, per- 

 haps the celandine poppy. (It has small yellow flowers and growls on 

 sandy ridges.) To get the most beautiful red dye, they boiled these 

 roots in "hair oil." A plant growing about yards and along fences, 

 which I was not able to identify, made a still deeper red. 



Sometimes, especially when cane was scarce, or when they had 

 moved out of the region where it was to be found, they had recourse 

 to the hackberry. Pieces of this of considerable size were pounded 

 up, whereupon layers would strip oiff of it. After being immersed 

 for a time in warm water, these would become pliant and work very 

 well. The dogwood was employed by the Koasati weavers of Okla- 

 homa. 



