Weaving New Worlds

440 pp., 7 x 10, 110 illus., 5 maps, notes, bibl., index

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4650-6
Published: June 1997

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Paperback $39.95

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Awards & distinctions

1998 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians

A 1997 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

In this innovative study, Sarah Hill illuminates the history of Southeastern Cherokee women by examining changes in their basketry. Based in tradition and made from locally gathered materials, baskets evoke the lives and landscapes of their makers. Indeed, as Weaving New Worlds reveals, the stories of Cherokee baskets and the women who weave them are intertwined and inseparable. Incorporating written, woven, and spoken records, Hill demonstrates that changes in Cherokee basketry signal important transformations in Cherokee culture. Over the course of three centuries, Cherokees developed four major basketry traditions, each based on a different material--rivercane, white oak, honeysuckle, and maple. Hill explores how the addition of each new material occurred in the context of lived experience, ecological processes, social conditions, economic circumstances, and historical eras. Incorporating insights from written sources, interviews with contemporary Cherokee weavers, and a close examination of the baskets themselves, she presents Cherokee women as shapers and subjects of change. Even in the face of cultural assault and environmental loss, she argues, Cherokee women have continued to take what they have to make what they need, literally and metaphorically weaving new worlds from old.

About the Author

Sarah H. Hill is an independent scholar who lives in Atlanta. A native of Georgia, she received her Ph.D. in American studies from Emory University.
For more information about Sarah H. Hill, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

“In this groundbreaking and innovative study, Hill herself engages in complex weaving, entwining the threads of archival research, oral history, and the study of material culture to create an illuminating picture of the lives of southeastern Cherokee women.”—Journal of Appalachian Studies

“Thoroughly researched, well-written, well-documented, and sympathetically presented, the history of the Cherokee women—their beliefs, their life work, and their impact on tribal history—should be read by anyone with an interest in ethnohistory, Southern history, women’s studies, or material culture."—American Historical Review

“Fresh and intriguing. . . . This well-written, meticulously researched work is not just a history of basketry. . . .After reading this book, one will surely have greater insights into Cherokee baskets, the female artisans who made them, and the times in which they worked."—Journal of Southern History

“Sarah Hill has woven a book that is large and strong enough to hold most of Cherokee history and culture . . . [and] shows us the important part which Cherokee women and their baskets have played and continue to play in that process.”—NC Folklore Journal

“An extensively researched and meticulously documented examination of the role of women in the history of these persistent occupants of the Southern Appalachians. . . . Hill’s metaphorical examination of women’s roles through the various changes reflected in their basketry is masterful.”—National Women’s Studies Association Journal

“Weaving New Worlds is a triumph at combining historical and cultural materials to present a comprehensive history of the art form of Eastern Band Cherokee basket making. . . . A must for all those interested in Southeastern Indians in general, American Indian art, and the Eastern Band Cherokee in particular.”—Appalachian Journal