This week started my wife's yearly holiday preparation kick off. It took very little coaxing on her part to persuade me to put away the rake, and join in. It seems that we begin earlier with each passing year, but as we both grow older, it takes longer to decorate. We take down and carefully wrap each piece in newspaper to be boxed, labeled and put away to make room for our Christmas decor. As I reached up on our book self and took down an old Cherokee basket, handmade by my grandmother many years ago, I remembered a bitterly cold day back when I was a small child. It was the beginning of the winter season, much as it is now.
We walked the roads of Cherokee, NC and the small surrounding towns around the reservation. My grandmother and I were selling Indian baskets. I was a very small boy and I can remember saying I wanted to go home, but my grandmother kept saying, "Just one more house" We both had our arms full of baskets - large ones, small ones, round ones, square ones. Some were rectangle which were used as picnic baskets. I knew just how many hours of hard labor my grandmother had put into these baskets, and you could tell from the fine craftsmanship.
She spoke mostly her native tongue, but I knew enough English by then to get by. My grandmother and grandfather had worked hard all their lives and raised many children including my mother, and now they were raising me. Somehow they both had survived the changes that life had forced upon them with the changing life in another culture. At each house my grandmother would ask the person living there to look at her baskets and suggest a price of a few pieces of used clothing. If the woman of the house decided to look at the baskets and bring out some clothing she didn't want, the bargaining would begin.
Sometimes I would have to translate the best I could with the non-Indians. I think back now of all the many hours of labor my grandmother had given for only a few shirts and dresses. These days the price of Indian baskets is very high, and they are mostly owned by non-Indians. These treasures, obtained at less than bargain basement prices, are now being sold at premium prices, if you can find them at all.
They are collector's items now, but the name of the person such as my grandmother, who labored to make them are hardly ever known. As my grandmother and I peddled our treasures in those early years, we probably looked like pitiful people. We were however living in a dignified manner as best we could while selling part of our culture for a few articles of used clothing. We really didn't have much to give - William