Tabasco Sauce and Rivercane Baskets: The Chitimacha Pursuit of Federal Recognition through the Arts and Crafts Movement

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Chitimacha Indians’ possession of their remaining land had become extremely precarious because they lacked legal protection from the United States government and suffered a surge of racial hostility from white neighbors.  Under these circumstances, a relationship forged between Chitimacha women and the McIlhenny sisters (Mary and Sara, daughters of Tabasco Pepper Sauce founder Edmund McIlhenny) became instrumental in this community’s pursuit of federal recognition.  The production and sale of exquisite baskets—woven from rivercane being depleted by environmental change—gave Chitimacha Indians special access to desperately needed political resources.  Through a network of communication with distant consumers of Indian arts and crafts, as mediated by the McIlhenny sisters, the Chitimachas were able to reach allies and officials at a crucial moment for the group’s survival.  This paper will closely examine Chitimacha correspondence with these allies and officials, over nearly two decades, in order to understand better how Indian agency and voice influenced the decision to extend federal trust status to the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana in 1916.