Cherokee Materials

Rowena Bradley explains that acquiring material for baskets has long been a problem. "You know, at times, she couldn't get cane." Once Tahlahyeh even made a few baskets of bamboo. A man from the neighboring town of Bryson,six miles west, "put up a craft shop" and brought her some bamboo. He was curious about the material and the weaver. Rowena Bradley smiles with the memory. "He wanted to know if she could make a basket out of it. Well, she did, but she dyed it just like she does the rivercane."

Rowena Bradley's mother was Nancy George Bradley (Tahtahyeh). That craftshop owner keeps one of Nancy Bradley's bamboo baskets in his extensive private collection. He considers it one of his most valuable acquisitions because of the unusual material and because it was made by Nancy Bradley.

source: Weaving New Worlds, by Sarah H. Hill