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Sewing Basket, ca. 1980

Contributed by Abbe Museum
MMN Item 14424 Item Details
Sewing Basket, ca. 1980
MMN Item 14424 Zoom

Description

The baskets in Anne Howells collection were made by Native Americans living in the Northeast. The majority are from Wabanaki communities in Maine and eastern Canada, including Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot. There are also a few baskets made by Abenaki people from Quebec and Native peoples from southern New England.

This basket is a style known as the "Abenaki Star." Although the Abenaki are not a federally recognized tribe in Maine, they have close historical and cultural ties to Maine's Native American communities. Many of the Abenaki who left the Kennebec River valley following the English raid on Norridgewock in 1724 settled in Odanak.

This basket was a gift to Anne Molloy Howells from Gaby Pelletier, a basket researcher and author of Abenaki Basketry (National Museums of Canada, 1982).

View additional information about this item on the Maine Memory Network.