Bradley, Rowena, 1922-2003

Rowena Bradley (1922-2003) was the third generation of known basket weavers in her family. Both her grandmother, Mary Dobson and her mother, Nancy Bradley were accomplished at making baskets. Bradley is often cited as one of only a handful of Cherokee basket weavers who carried on the complex double weave technique in the 1930s and 1940s. Her baskets won numerous awards at the annual Cherokee Indian Fairs and an exhibition of her work was held at Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual in Cherokee, North Carolina, in 1974.

Born in 1922, Rowena Bradley was raised on Swimmer Branch in the Painttown Community on the Qualla Indian Boundary, lands owned by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. As a child, she learned to weave baskets by watching her mother. She made her first basket somewhere around 1928, before she started school. She was just six-years-old. The youngest of eight children, Rowena Bradley lived with her parents until their death.

While the skill of Cherokee basketry was traditionally passed from mother to daughter, in many families, making baskets involved the entire family. Rowena Bradley’s father, Henry Bradley, Principal Chief of the Eastern Band, and her brother Jim, participated by gathering rivercane and digging roots for dye materials. Still the actual weaving of baskets was the province of women. Rowena Bradley, her sister Ellen Arneach, their mother, Nancy George Bradley (1881-1963), and their grandmother, Mary Dobson (b. circa 1857) were all basket weavers.