Clara's Basket

Today, I'm thinking about the things in life that we miss, the ones that are irreplaceable. Aside from the people and pets long gone that we still yearn for, most inimitable objects, are merely just "things." It's what they stood for, that's what we really miss. Not being able to have and to hold them is only secondary. I'm missing Clara's basket and all that it represented to me.

I look at the lonely one remaining basket, one of three unique native peoples baskets that used to grace my dresser. A indigenous Chortí Maya woman that I once stayed with, on the banks of the Copán River, near the Mayan ruins of Copán, Honduras, gave me that little double lipped locking basket.

It's significance to me, is so much more than a tiny basket. It's about the friendship we shared among biting mosquitoes and the loud and feisty macaws -- all without the cumbersome burden of mutual words, for what we had to talk about could only be accomplished with our eyes and smiles.

I look at it and see not the use I have for it, making it a dear object (lockable travel basket for jewelry) -- but rather, the indelible memory of a woman older than time, squatting on a blanket thrown on the dirt floor of the hut we shared, weaving her baskets, and teaching me to appreciate a far simpler life.

There used to be another basket that sat to the right of the Chortí Mayan one, a rattan basket from Ban Bu Thom, Thailand. It's missing too. However, I still have my memory of the water buffalo, that the basket maker's husband used to bring it to market, and watching it being unloaded from the beast. From it, I learned it takes more than just the talent of a weaver -- it takes the support of other hands that toil, rather than hands that create, to make the weaver's efforts worthwhile.

I miss that basket, but not as much as I miss Clara's basket. Clara's basket also used to be right there next to the other two. Clara's basket told me an unpleasant historical truth, one I do not want to forget. It was my visual link to "keeping it real," when it comes to talking about cultural history. Holding it, I felt the weight of all knowledge that has not made it to the school history textbooks.

I received Clara's little basket a few years back from an elderly distant cousin on the Navarre side of my family. Frequently, my husband and I would visit her and her son, the men folk having a passion for wild boar hunts and web foot dogs. Most times, they be off from sunup to sundown on these adventures and I'd stay behind with Cousin Euranie.

Nearing the end of her life, Cousin Euranie was cleaning out old recipe boxes, family photos, and momentos and giving them away to friends and relatives. One day as she taught me how to make elderberry wine, she fished out a double woven lidded little red, black, and yellow basket. It was a squared "carba basket" as she called it, which she had used to keep cornmeal in her pantry, and said,

"Here's some history for you to keep that'll make you hang your head in shame."

Cousin Marie Euranie Navarre (Delahoussaye) had inherited the basket from her grandmother, who had gotten it from Heloise Delahoussaye (another relative), who had gotten it from well-known basket weaver, Clara Darden, of the Chitimacha tribe. Heloise Fay Delahoussay is credited as being responsible for keeping Chitimacha traditional crafts like basket weaving alive at a time when the tribe's population had dwindled down to almost becoming extinct.

Even Clara Darden, was related to all of us through marriage. Despite being a certified genealogist, I won't even attempt to explain how, lest I end up writing a book, instead of a hub. Being Cajun, often gives new meaning to "a six degrees separation."

The tangled genealogy weave of Acadian (Cajun) family names is as intricate and complicated as Clara Darden's basket weaving. Historically, our families are related in the most complex ways, and that always includes the blood lines of native peoples. This is especially true of the Huron, Chitimacha, and Houma tribes. Virtually all of the original sixty-eight Acadian family surnames found in Louisiana, are peppered with intermarriage among our peoples and native tribes.

Then, there's the sticky little issue of Catholic Church marriage dispensations, the sole reason all Cajuns are "cousins." Our great-grandparent's family lines crossed no less than six times as you wade through the family tree. One of those crossed lines is the result of a marriage between an Acadian man and a Chitimacha girl, the other is a result of a marriage between a French explorer Jacques Coutourier and Catherine Annennontak, a Huron girl.

The stories are also a ones of great hardship and slavery at the hands of other dominant peoples . Not surprisingly, there are few little cans of worms in our history (which is true of all ethnic histories). One little known fact is that Acadian men, women, and children were sold into slavery and as indentured servants in some cases, by the British during their expulsion of us from Nova Scotia.

Another, even lesser known fact, is that the land that King Charles II of Spain (and the King of France earlier) gave us in Louisiana, already belonged to the Chitimacha and the Houma. While we weren't the first to encroach upon their land, from the moment European man (in this case French and Spanish) came to Louisiana, they began making slaves of the Chitimacha. There was a troublesome little twelve year war in which many of the Chitimacha were taken by slaves by some of our own French ancestors.

As time went by, in the colonization of Louisiana, some Acadians became wealthy plantation owners. Some Acadians owned slaves, even slaves of mixed with Acadian blood. Not all of those slaves were from Africa, some came from nearby native tribes, including the Chitimacha.

At one time the Chitimacha Tribe was several thousand members strong, and tribal lands spread across thousands of acres. By the time Clara Darden was born in the 1830s -- their land had been reduced to a little over a thousand acres (only large if you don't know that an acre is about the size of a foot-ball field). In Clara's life time, that land would be reduced by white man's laws to a mere 261.54 acres. Yet, to their credit, they are the only tribe in Louisiana who still own part of their original aboriginal lands.

Also in Clara Darden's life-time (she lived to be well over 100 years old), the tribe's people shrank to a mere fifty-one people in 1930. Today, the tribe's population is up to around seven hundred and twenty people, according to some sources. A little over four hundred live on the reservation and only two hundred and eight-five are solely of Native American heritage.

Adding insult to injury, when our Acadian ancestors joined French and Spanish nationals in Louisiana, we added to the decline of the Chitimacha tribe's population decline as we also intermarried, acculturated them, imposed our Catholic faith upon them, and claimed their land as our own. As Cousin Euranie put it:

"After all, as displaced people, being "gifted" that land by the Spanish, who were we to questioned the fairness of it all? Were we not guilty of doing to them, the very horrific things that had been done to us?"

Cousin Euranie thought it best to give me that small basket, that represented to both of us, the ties that bind people in the most complex of ways -- because she wanted me to tell others, that even the most innocent of intentions, are not always so innocent in the story of a place, the peoples, and the ties that bind us.

Sadly, that basket and the one from Ban Bu Thom disappeared in a move last year, that necessitated hiring temp agency workers, along with a truckload of other personal possessions. Seems hiring the homeless and transient workers has its pitfalls.

Now, possessions come and go, I've lived long enough to know that. In the end, it's not about "things" except maybe, when it comes down to a worn out cornmeal basket older than me. To whoever ended up with Clara's basket, it probably was something destined for the trash bin -- not history alive in the palm of your hand. Still, there is a part of me, who dreams that it still survives somehow, in spite of hardships, prejudice, governmental wrongs, and discrimination -- still holding onto existence, like the Chitimacha and the Cajuns.

Basket weaving, of course, is not limited to the Chitimacha and native peoples traditionally -- many ethnic groups practiced and still make baskets. Most are made of natural material, such as:

• Split White Oak
• River Cane(Pija)
• Bamboo
• Grasses and Stems(Bulrush, cattail, broom corn, Canadian blue grass, reed grass, milkweed, and sedge)
• Reed
• Rattan
• Willow
• Cacti
• Shoots (White birch, cottonwood, hazelnut, mulberry, poplar, three leaf sumac, weeping willow)
• Fibrous Roots (Alder, bracken, cedar, elm, hemlock, and black locust)
• Vines(Clematis, honeysuckle, English ivy, and wisteria)
• Runners (Grapevines and Virginia Creepers)
• Barks(Basswood, paper birch, red and white cedar, white pine, redbud, and black walnut)
• Leaves (Cattail, holy grass, squaw grass, corn husks, iris, palm leaves, and yucca)
• Maidenhead Ferns

Awl -- Small hole making tool (suitable for passing of binder fibers in coiled basketry)

Binder -- Material that connects one row of core basketry elements to another in coiled basketry

Bird's Eye -- Twining technique using three crossing wefts to produce a design that has a dot inside of two curving wefts

Butterfly -- Winding yarn method into units suitable for weaving or twining

Cane -- Rattan family plant, used for warp and weft elements in baskets

Chevron -- "V" design in basket weaving made from two rows of double weft twining turned in the same direction

Coil -- Row or element of core strands that are usually bound in a circular fashion

Core -- Strand or strands of weaving fibers forming the inner structure of a coiled basket

Crochet -- In basket weaving this is a process in which fibers are lopped through each other

Double Weft -- this is two strands of weft or weavers passing on both sides of, and twisted between, warp strands; the result is a woven fabric

Dovetail -- This method of joining areas of color in tapestry weaving, or twining; weft strands connect around a common warp strand.

Ghiordes Knot -- This knot is used to create a pile or shag like surface on baskets

Imbrication -- This refers to a supplemental surface texture or decoration that is used on coiled baskets

Interlocking-- This is a basket weaving method of joining weft strands to each other, between areas of color in weaving or twining

Raffia -- This weaving fiber from palm trees is found throughout Asia and sold in craft stores

Reed -- This material is from a tall bamboo-like grass and processed today to a uniform thickness for basketry

Rod -- A rod is a single fiber strand, or a branch of a tree in basketry

Slit -- Is the opening(s) created in slit weaving or twining

Soumak -- A weaving and twining technique used to create surface texture

Split-- A branch or shoot of a tree which has been divided into flat strips or sections

Spoke -- Used to indicate the warp or vertical elements of a basket

Stitch-- The binding of two or more core elements to each other

Tapestry -- A flat surface weft-faced weave made of isolated areas of pattern or color

Twining-- The hand weaving process of interlacing the two elements of warp and weft to produce a fabric

Warp - The vertical or structural strands of a woven or twined fabric

Weaving - The process of moving a single weft strand over and under warp elements

Weavers -- Another name for the weft in a twined basket

Weft -- The horizontal or fastening strands of a woven or twined fabric

Wicker -- The name applied to a basket made of willow