Basket Day Celebrates Seacoast Indian Tradition

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Portsmouth has been a center for historic preservation, decorative arts, scholarship, and archaeological study for many years, but baskets as part of the region's artistic and historic heritage have been largely unstudied. This lack of scholarship has resulted in significant gaps in knowledge about the role Native Americans played in the development of the provincial seaport town. An October 5 project hopes to change that. (See details below) 

The project aims to begin to fill this gap and bring to public attention the physical presence of Native Americans through the baskets they made.  

The Humanities Council has awarded a grant to the Warner House Association in Portsmouth for a day-long celebration of traditional baskets. The event is part of a year-long commemoration of the Treaty of 1713 between the Eastern Abenaki and the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire. The Warner House Association is partnering with the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum and the Portsmouth Historical Society for this project. 

Basket Day will be held on Saturday, October 5 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Discover Portsmouth Center at 10 Middle St. The day-long event will begin with members of the public bringing their own baskets for identification by a team of experts. A panel of basket experts, catalogers and photographers will examine each basket, identify its age, origin, physical characteristics and known history, and photograph the basket. 

These records will be added to the Basket Trail on-line archive at the University of New Hampshire. The day will conclude with a lecture by basket expert 
Gaby Pelletier at 4:30 p.m.