By the rivers of Babylon: The lowcountry basket in slavery and freedom

Abstract

This chapter traces the evolution of coiled basketry from its arrival in Carolina, most likely with the first shiploads of African captives, through the twentieth century, when it became the region's emblematic folk art. In the crucible of slavery, basket-making traditions from many places across Africa were forged into a single creole style. Rice winnowing baskets, called "fanners", were commonly made from bulrush sewn with thin splints of white oak or with strips peeled from the stem of the saw palmetto. Essential to the processing of Carolina's staple crop, these hand tools were mass produced by enslaved Africans beginning at least as early as 1690. Once established in South Carolina, the African-American tradition of Lowcountry basketry spread to Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and even Bermuda and the Caicos Islands, as planters moved to new territories with their seasoned rice hands. What we know about plantation basketry comes mainly from accounts written by masters and their hirelings, such as estate inventories, overseers' records, and runaway slave ads. Basket shapes, however, also tell a tale. Double and triple baskets recall Kongo stacked and stepped-lid forms, and Moses baskets conjure up both the trickster Moses, escaping from Pharaoh in a bulrush basket, and the patriarch, leading his people out of slavery.