River-cane baskets woven by the Chitimachas of south Louisiana are universally admired for their beauty and workmanship. Recounting friendships that Chitimacha weaver Christine Paul (1874-1946) sustained with two non-Native women at different parts of her life, this book offers a rare vantage point into the lives of American Indians in the segregated South.

DANIEL J. USNER is the Holland N. McTyeire Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Indian Work: Language and Livelihood in Native American History; Indians, Settlers, and Slaves
in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before1783; and American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories.