Mary Kawennatakie Adams

Mary Kawennatakie Adams (January 24, 1917 – May 23, 1999) was a Mohawk First Nations textile artist and basket maker.

Mary Kawennatakie Adams, a hereditary member of the Mohawk wolf clan, was born on Cornwall Island at Akwesasne on the Mohawk Nation, which straddles the New York/Canadian border.

She was born in Ontario, Canada.

Her Mohawk name Kawennatakie means "approaching voice."

She had no formal education after age 16 and did not learn English until well into adulthood.

Adams' childhood was spent close to her mother and grandmother.

At the age of 6, Adams learned from her mother how to process black ash splints and sweetgrass and weave baskets.

When she was 10 years old, her mother died, and her father left the reserve to seek employment as an iron worker.

Initially, Adams was locally trading her baskets for needed food and other items, but later learned that trading the baskets for cigarettes and then selling the cigarettes brought in more money.

In this way she was able to support herself and her brother.

Her brother helped by felling the ash so she could prepare the wood.

Adams married at the age of 17.

She had 12 children, she supported her family with her baskets.

Her family was involved in each step (cutting, pounding, cleaning, shaving, braiding) of this endeavor.

By the time she was in her early 50s, she was financially independent.

She was then able to make baskets that were "imaginative and distinctive" rather than utilitarian.

Later, she taught basket making on the Mohawk Reserve at Akwesasne.

She traveled widely to give demonstrations of Mohawk basket making.

Adams' duel cultural influences from being Mohawk and Roman Catholic is, in the words of scholar Olivia Thornburn, "interwoven with her splint ash and sweet grass baskets."

She was active in St. Regis Catholic Church.

Métis scholar Sherry Farrell Racette noted Adam's "skilled execution" in a unique stitch known as the "bird-mouth" stitch, and her skill in "texture created by the innovative application of tiny, miniature baskets."

Mary Adams was married to Michael Adams on September 18, 1939.

The couple had twelve children.

Adams's work is in the permanent collections of the Iroquois Indian Museum in New York, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, the New York State Governor's Collection of Art in Albany, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Her exhibitions include the Smithsonian Institution; the Museum at the University at Albany, SUNY; the Heard Museum; the National Museum of the American Indian; the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Adams continued to make baskets throughout her life.

At the time of her death, even with failing eyesight, she was braiding sweet grass for her daughter Trudy, who was also making baskets.

In 1980, Adams presented Pope John Paul II at the Vatican with a basket specially made to honor the beatification of now St. Kateri Tekakwitha, a noted 17th-century Mohawk-Algonquian woman.

Thornburn described the design of this basket, known as the Pope Basket, as "highly architectural and almost baroque. . ."The design of the basket lid may reflect the papal zucchetto, or skullcap.

Also, the shape of the basket is similar to Michelangelo's grand dome of St. Peter's Basilica." The design for this basket came to Adam's in a dream. A replica of the basket, also made by Adams, is at the Smithsonian.

During her life, she produced more than 25,000 baskets.

In 1997, she received an award for excellence in Iroquois art from the Iroquois Indian Museum.

Adams was included in the 1998 exhibition Crossing the Threshold, focusing on women artists, at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.

In 1999, Mary Adams died at home, in Snye, Quebec, on the Akwesasne Mohawk Reserve.