For many years the Wounaan and Emberá Indians living in
the Darién Rainforest of Panamá were considered one homogenous group called the
"Chocó" since they share a similar riverside rainforest culture and both tribes
originally migrated from the Chocó Department of Colombia. While the Emberá began to move into Panamá
over three hundred years ago, the Wounaan only began arriving around the middle
of the twentieth century.

In 1969 Robert Gunn and Ron Binder made a preliminary survey
of the languages spoken by the indigenous tribes in Panamá for the Summer
Institute of Linguistics. By 1970 they
had confirmed that the "Chocó" were made up of two distinctly different tribes:
the Wounaan and the Emberá. These
studies helped publicize the fact that to lump the Wounaan and Emberá together
is incorrect.

The Wounaan and Emberá traditionally live in the Chocó
Bioregion, the tropical rainforest lowlands on the Pacific Coast of Eastern
Panamá, Western Colombia, and northern Ecuador. Called Darién Province in Panamá and
Department of Chocó in Colombia, that is so difficult of access that even now
the Inter-American Highway stops at the town of Yaviza in Panamá and does not
continue on through the 106 kilometer long "Darién Gap"; it is the only section
of the highway between Alaska in the north and Tierra del Fuego in the south
that is still missing.

Foot travel in
the rainforest is difficult because of the many small, very steep hills
overgrown with trees and vines. Several
inches of fallen leaves and tree debris cover the muddy ground that is usually
slippery from the frequent rains. (It
can rain over 160 inches a year - more than 13 feet - in the rainforest, and
rainfall averages more than twice that in parts of neighboring Chocó in Colombia.) The visibility is poor, and many vines and
trees protect themselves from predators by growing sharp spines. The most dangerous tree for the unwary hiker
is Chunga, the black palm tree
(Astrocaryum standleyanum) which has black wood and very sharp black spines
that can reach 8 inches in length. Chunga is also the most important tree
in this area for the Wounaan and Emberá.
They prize the strong, hard black wood for house construction, the
leaves are used in curandero
(healing) ceremonies, and their fine baskets, the hösig di, are made from the leaf fibers.

Many Wounaan and Emberá families continue to live
traditionally in isolated households along the banks of the main rivers of the
Darién - the Chucunaque, Tuíra, Balsas, Tuquesa, Jaqué, Sambú, Membrillo, Yape,
Tucutí, Chico -
much as they have lived for centuries.
Each extended family group prefers to live as separately as possible
from other people to avoid problems with their neighbors. Each bend of the river may hold several
houses that usually belong to close relatives.
An ideal location to build a home is at the point where two rivers join
together, high on the riverbank where it will be safe from floods.

Today the Wounaan and Emberá are best known in the
outside world for their fine craftsmanship as carvers and basket weavers. Traditionally they have always been noted
artisans. According to both Ron Binder
and Selerino, the Wounaan are the originators of fine art while the Emberá are
only imitators of Wounaan ideas and creations.
Carlos Weil, the Swiss owner of the Bernheim
Art Gallery
in Panamá City, concurs, sayings that in general
the Wounaan are the finer artisans, and many other collectors agree with his
assessment. Individual Emberá artists,
however, do equally fine work. An outsider
cannot ordinarily distinguish between Wounaan and Emberá work, since their
lifestyles and crafts are so similar.
Even the Indians themselves cannot necessarily identify a basket, for
example, as being distinctly Emberá or Wounaan in origin, although they might
be able to identify the work of an individual artist.

Basket making, a tradutuibak art that has been handed
down from mother to daughter since the earliest times, represents the deepest
traditions of Wounaan and Emberá culture.
Baskets are usually made by women.

All baskets
made traditionally by the Wounaan and Emberá are woven with different materials
found in the rainforest, and come in many different shapes and sizes, depending
on the specific use for which each is intended.

I have divided
the baskets described here into two separate groups: the hösig di, fine baskets
of chunga made with a coil
construction, and the utilitarian baskets.
Since the fine chunga baskets
are the most tightly constructed as well as the most difficult to make, they
are the ones that most interest collectors of fine baskets. Since they were traditionally made only by
the Wounaan, I have chosen to call them by their Wounaan name hösig di.

CHUNGA

The thread
used to sew hösig di comes from chunga, the black palm tree (Astrocaryum
standeleyanum). It is historically
important to the Wounaan and plays a very important role in Wounaan life. While it is called chunga in Panamá, it is
called weguerr (or wérregue or guérregue) in Colombia, using the Wounaan name for
the tree that is so intimately linked with the Wounaan people. Whenever there is a singing or healing
ceremony, tender young fronds of chunga are used to decorate the house. The fibers are used to adorn the ceremonial
flutes and healing sticks that are used by the curandero, the spiritual healer or shaman, in healing rites; only
chunga fiber has the ability to tie down or immobilize evil spirits. Bows and arrow, blowguns and blowpipes were
all made of chunga because of the wood's strength, straight grain, and
resistance to warping. The hard chunga
wood is used for house posts, literally as well as figuratively supporting the
Wounaan household.

HÖSIG DI, FINE BASKETS MADE OF CHUNGA

Hösig di, the traditional Wounaan baskets made of fine
chunga, (fiber from the black palm tree), were not greatly decorated. Sometimes a few rudimentary black or red
designs were incorporated into the natural undyed, chunga, but most often they
were usually quite small. Only in 1982
did the Wounaan begin making their hösig di baskets of chunga for collectors,
and by 1990 both Wounaan and Emberá were making hösig di baskets to sell.

Those early baskets of 1982 and 1983 were small, crude,
often lopsided, and had generally uneven stitches and very little
decoration. Rob Binder of the Summer
Institute of Linguistics had encouraged his Wounaan neighbors in the Darién to
make baskets for sale to collectors as a way of breaking into Panamá's cash
economy. He knew that the Emberá had
been dyeing their traditional utilitarian baskets black with mucuña paste dye, and suggested that the
Wounaan could similarly add color to their baskets. He brought hösig di baskets with black
designs back from Colombia
to show them what their kinfolk were making, and he also showed them several baskets
from an American collection to stimulate their creative thinking. Other friends, collectors, and patrons such
as John Cubit, Eleanor Gale, and Llori Gibson suggested that more designs,
finer stitches, and more symmetrical shapes would increase the quality of the
baskets and bring higher prices from collectors.

During the 1980's and ‘90's,
the Gamboa Nature Fairs, as well as the Spring and Christmas Bazaars held by
women's groups in the Panamá Canal Zone, served as an outlet for selling
baskets to collectors. To showcase the
baskets in the early 1980's, Llori Gibson and Eleanor Gale opened the Darién Indian
Museum in Gamboa, which
was run by the Panamá Audubon Society.
Since their own personal collections were so enthusiastically viewed by
visitors who wanted to buy baskets, they thought that a gallery which sold this
new art form would be quite successful.
In August 1994, Jackie Fearon, Eleanor Gale, Llori Gibson, Faye
Thompson, Cheryl Williams, and Diana Williams opened the New World Gallery in
Balboa, specializing in hösig di baskets.

Source: DARIÉN
RAINFOREST BASKETRY, Baskets of the Wounaan and Emberá Indians from the Darién
Rainforest of Panamá. By Margo M.
Callaghan, HPL Enterprises, Chandler,
Arizona, Revised June 2006.