Daniel H. Usner offers a cultural, political, and social history of the Chitimacha Tribe in South Louisiana and its struggle for political sovereignty. Between the 1890s and 1940s, Chitimacha Indian women in South Louisiana - with extraordinary baskets they created from rivercane - strategically built a network of allies that originated in a relationship with neighboring white women and that would eventually extend across the United States. Responding resourcefully to renewed interest in their basketry largely driven by the arts and crafts market and ethnographic collection, the Chitimachas were able to contact individuals and groups far from their home who possessed potential influence on government policy. Confronting at the same time perilous threats to their land, autonomy, and even their lives in the Jim Crow South, women in this Indigenous community were inessence weaving political allies as they wove their rivercane baskets. Besides the considerable revenue Chitimacha baskets brought to tribal coffers, the story of the Chitimacha people and their predicament gained attention as their basketry appeared in major art gallery shows and museums and was sought by art collectors. By expanding the view beyond southern Louisiana and tracking the nationwide circulation of Chitimacha basketry, From Bayou Teche to Fifth Avenue illustrates how Indigenous people in North America have creatively confronted adversity and peril with aesthetic forms of expression.
Daniel H. Usner is Holland N. McTyeire Professor Emeritus of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Native American Women and the Burdens of Southern History and Weaving Alliances with Other Women: Chitimacha Indian Work in the New South, among other books. In 2024 Usner was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Ethnohistory.
List of Illustrations Introduction Christmas Morning on Bayou Teche, 1901 Chapter 1 Chitimacha Diplomacy in Early Louisiana Chapter 2 Surviving in Sugar Cane Country Chapter 3 Finding Mary McIlhenny Bradford Chapter 4 Christine Paul Weaves and Writes for Her People Chapter 5 Mary Bradford and Neltje Doubleday Form a Partnership Chapter 6 Craving Indian Baskets Chapter 7 In the Hands of Anthropologists Chapter 8 Going to School at Carlisle Chapter 9 Saving Chitimacha Land Chapter 10 New Deal for Indian Art Chapter 11 Turning to Caroline Dormon Conclusion The Legacy of Basket Diplomacy Acknowledgements Bibliography Index
"Intimately grounded on the banks of Bayou Teche, but reaching far beyond, Daniel Usner celebrates the incredible Chitimacha women and their white allies who preserved community by weaving baskets as well as personal connections. The result is a powerful tribute to the women whose fight to save their nation changed America."-Cathleen D. Cahill, author of Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933 "Truly a remarkable piece of scholarship! The depth and breadth of coverage is amazing. Daniel Usner takes the history of a much-neglected tribe and links it to broad themes of race, class, gender, and the environment across U.S. history, and he covers several genres of historical study to boot. From Bayou Teche to Fifth Avenue is an eminently readable text that will appeal to people with a broad range of interests."-Katherine M. B. Osburn, author of Choctaw Resurgence in Mississippi: Race, Class, and Nation Building in the Jim Crow South, 1830-1977 "In From Bayou Teche to Fifth Avenue, Chitimacha women take center stage as artists, negotiators, and defenders of their nation. . . . With clarity and eloquence, historian Daniel Usner reveals how [Chitimacha] 'basket diplomacy' became both political resistance and cultural endurance. Brimming with vivid detail and amplifying overlooked voices, this book makes a powerful contribution to art history, Indigenous studies, and political history as a testament to resilience, creativity, and Indigenous leadership."-Denise E. Bates, author of Basket Diplomacy: Leadership, Alliance-Building, and Resilience among the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, 1884-1984
