On a recent trip to Charleston South Carolina to celebrate my 14 wedding anniversary I learned about sweetgrass. Sweetgrass baskets use to be called slave baskets until one day someone took a negative and turn it into a positive, so the name was changed to sweetgrass baskets. I also learned that the art of making sweetgrass baskets is passed down to the next generation just like crocheting. Sweetgrass baskets are almost identical in style to the shukublay baskets of Sierra Leone, where learning to coil baskets "so tightly they could hold water" was an important rite of passage in West African tribes like the Mende and the Temne. This basket-making tradition came to South Carolina in the 17th century by way of West African slaves who were brought to America to work on plantations. West Africa resembles South Carolina in both climate and landscape, and rice had long been cultivated there. In slaves, plantation owners gained not only free labor but also a wealth of knowledge and