A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 418)

MELISSA DARDEN BROWN (Chitimacha) Double-Weave Lidded Cigar Case with Mouse Track Design Split cane (Arundinaria), commercial dye; 3 x 1 in. Whitecloud Collection JOHN AND SCARLETT DARDEN (Chitimacha) Basket Bowl with Fish Scales Design, 1990 Split cane (Arundinaria), commercial dye; 3 x 7 in. Whitecloud Collection DARDEN FAMILY (Chitimacha) Elbow Basket with Rabbit's Teeth Design Split cane (Arundinaria), commercial dye; 5 x 6 in. Whitecloud Collection from 1922 to his death in 1942. Like generations of Coushatta women before her, Ency instilled in her offspring a deep respect for their heritage and a desire to perpetuate tribal customs. Ency’s last-born child, Edna Lorena Abbott Langley (19332009), was one such cultural ambassador and tradition bearer. In addition to weaving exquisite pine-needle baskets, she was one of the last known Coushatta potters, creating vessels that had once been made to store traditional herbal medicines. She was also fluent in Koasati, a Muskogean language that survives in a relatively pure form among its few remaining speakers. Langley’s crafts received recognition at national arts fairs and are held in prominent collections across the South. In 1993, Langley was inducted into the Louisiana Folklife Center’s Hall of Master Folk Artists. Today, Langley’s children, Rosalene Langley Medford and Ronald Langley, continue their mother’s artistic legacy by demonstrating pine-needle basket weaving at area fairs and festivals. Lorena’s half-brother Bel Abbey (1916-1992), and his wife Nora Williams Abbey (1920-1984), also inherited an appreciation of their tribal heritage, shared, in turn, with daughters Joyce Abbey Poncho, Myrna Abbey Wilson, and Marjorie Abbey Battise. The sisters are skilled pine-needle basket makers and, while most weavers demonstrate individual techniques, Battise’s left-handedness results in a distinct “backwards” stitch. She is also a historian of Coushatta foodways and demonstrates traditional tribal foods such as fry bread and corn soup at folk festivals. Wilson has helped to preserve the tribe’s cultural heritage through the perpetuation of classic Coushatta narratives learned from her father. Poncho not only creates baskets from pinestraw, but also maintains the split cane basketry tradition. Bel Abbey, a master storyteller, helped to create a Koasati 418 LOUISIANA NATIVE AMERICAN BASKETRY dictionary and a translation of the Bible in the tribe’s ancestral language. Wilson and Battise, along with their father, were inducted into the Louisiana Hall of Master Folk Artists in 1982. Poncho resides with her husband Robert in Livingston, Texas, in the Alabama-Coushatta community. With the opening of the Coushatta Casino Resort and inhouse gift shop in the mid-1990s, weavers have experienced an increased demand for their baskets. They face, however, a shortage of Louisiana long-leaf pine needles due to deforestation, which has forced them to utilize the faster-growing slash pine (Pinus elliottii) or import their preferred material from other parts of the state. Coushatta baskets are in the permanent collections of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Louisiana State Museum, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and many esteemed private collections across the country. JANIE VERRET LUSTER: COILED HALF-HITCH BASKETRY, UNITED HOUMA NATION Janie Verret Luster is a master palmetto basket weaver and cultural preservationist of the United Houma Nation, a staterecognized tribe from Southeast Louisiana. A dedicated practitioner of diverse tribal customs, she is widely recognized for her coiled half-hitch baskets, made using an intricate weaving technique lost to the Houma for nearly a generation. Reintroduced by Luster in the 1990s, the hitch-coil method with a half-hitch knot—common in areas of South and Central America—is considered limited in North America to Louisiana’s largest tribe of indigenous peoples.  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1303

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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