Bull Nose or Cow Nose Basket with Handle
Choctaw
Southeast
collected 1887-1906
River cane, twill plaiting, and pink with orange dye
Overall: 6 1/2 × 4 7/8 × 2 3/8 in. (16.5 × 12.4 × 6.1 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Mrs. Ida Farr Miller
44.18.8788
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Basket
Research Area
Native American
Native American: Southeast
Not on view
Label
The Choctaw women who wove these baskets used river cane, a semi-aquatic grass cultivated along riverbanks. Several Native American tribes from the southeastern United States tended these grasses, caring for them and nurturing them, to weave baskets used within their communities and traded with their neighbors.
When the Choctaw were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), they brought these traditions with them and cultivated river cane along the banks of Oklahoma’s rivers. Using a double-weave structure, essentially weaving one basket into another, some highly skilled women wove baskets so tightly that they could even hold water.
From the 2023 exhibition Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, curated by Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art
Course History
First Year Student Enrichment Program - Cultures, Identities and Belongings, Francine A'Ness, Summer 2023
Anthropology 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Fall 2023
Anthropology 55.01, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Fall 2023
Art History 40.01, American Art and Identity, Mary Coffey, Fall 2023
Creative Writing 10.02, Writing and Reading Fiction, Katherine Crouch, Fall 2023
Geography 11.01, Qualitative Methods, Emma Colven, Fall 2023
Geography 2.01, Introduction to Human Geography, Coleen Fox, Fall 2023
Geography 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Fall 2023
English 30.01, African and African American Studies 34.01, Early Black American LIterature, Michael Chaney, Winter 2024
Writing 5.06, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Winter 2024
Writing 5.07, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Winter 2024
Exhibition History
Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water, Israel Sack Gallery and the Rush Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 29, 2023-December 14, 2023.
Provenance
Collected by Ellen Frances Burpee Farr (1840-1907) (Mrs. Evarts Worcester Farr, Class of 1863W), Pasadena, California, between 1887-1906; given to her daughter, Ida Farr Miller (1863-1953), 1907; given to present collection, 1944.
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