An exceptional pony beaded saddlebag, the material and designs show it to be of an early date. During the pre-1850 era there was not the easily determined tribal identification that came with the seed bead era. Many of the Northern Plains tribes used similar designs and design arrangements, and as a result tribal identification was difficult at best. The functional saddlebag offered here falls into that category. It contains combinations of design elements common to the Cheyenne, Blackfoot and Sioux making any sort of tribal identification a guess at best. It does, however, present us with a strong representation of an early saddlebag of the earliest form.