[Illustration: Root Runner Basket]
The Rappahannock Indians of Virginia make a basket of Japanese
honeysuckle root runners of a wicker type weave which is crude in
weaving technique in comparison with baskets from North Carolina.
(Rappahannock of Virginia.) Quoting Dr. Speck, “The art was revived by
some of the women in 1922, when the Indian Association was formed. Susie
and Lizzie Nelson, old Bob Nelson and other Rappahannock Indians made
these baskets at that time. Chief Otto Nelson, his wife Susie, and
Lizzie Nelson remember that when they were young about 1890, their
grandmother Sallie Ronnie, who was then about 60 years old, had a
honeysuckle sewing basket shaped like an oval bowl, similar in weave to
the baskets mentioned above.
“There is a native local, variety of Red Honeysuckle (Lonicera
sempervirens) in Virginia which is not a ground runner but clings for
six feet or so to trees and fences; it is finer stemmed than the
Japanese variety and Indian women of the Rappahannock tribe have agreed
to weave with it. All honeysuckle runners are kept soaked in water to
preserve their pliability for weaving. They can be gathered and woven at
any time of the year if treated in this manner.”
As far as known no other fine root runner is used for basket weaving by
the Indians of this state, although other fine root runners such as
Devil’s Shoestring and London Pride grow there. Comments on honeysuckle
wicker-weave baskets among the Mattaponi Indians of Virginia are made by
Dr. Frank Speck in his book “At Mattaponi,” in which he speaks of the
girls making baskets of honeysuckle stems, meticulously neat and with a
technique suspiciously European in detail. We cannot be too sure that
something like this did not exist before as many references to baskets
of various forms made in the early days are encountered.[4] The Pamunkey
Tribe, living on a reservation ten miles south of Mattaponi, have used
honeysuckle runners for over twenty years. In both bands the details of
form and weave are identical, and the historical circumstances may also
be.