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Details
A CROW BEADED CLOTH WAR SHIRT
constructed of navy blue wool trade cloth, overlaid across the shoulders and down the arms with panels of buffalo hide, each sinew sewn with Crow stitch beadwork in translucent blue and green, yellow, and white-heart red beads against a light blue beaded ground, with pairs of bars centering elongated star motifs, rectangular bibs on the front and back with linear beadwork, applied strips of red trade cloth and hair pendants wrapped with bird quills, the sleeves trimmed with ermine fur streamers and red wool trade cloth cuffs, pinked along the edges
Width: 61 in. (155 cm.) across the arms
constructed of navy blue wool trade cloth, overlaid across the shoulders and down the arms with panels of buffalo hide, each sinew sewn with Crow stitch beadwork in translucent blue and green, yellow, and white-heart red beads against a light blue beaded ground, with pairs of bars centering elongated star motifs, rectangular bibs on the front and back with linear beadwork, applied strips of red trade cloth and hair pendants wrapped with bird quills, the sleeves trimmed with ermine fur streamers and red wool trade cloth cuffs, pinked along the edges
Width: 61 in. (155 cm.) across the arms
Provenance
Collected by Augustus Ruffner Keller between 1878 and 1881, while serving as Indian Agent on the Montana Crow Reservation, and through the family by descent.
Further details
Throughout his career as their Agent (1878 - 1881), August. R. Keller demonstrated his respect and admiration for the Crow Indian people in a number of ways. Keller, a federal veteran of the Civil War, championed Crow interests in part by pressuring the United States Government to honor treaties and obligations. He accompanied a delegation of Crow leaders to Washington, D. C. to meet President Rutherford B. Hayes (where the entire delegation was photographed dressed in all its finery). Furthermore, Keller demonstrated his interest in the Crow by assembling a significant personal collection of historic material culture from the tribe. This shirt exemplifies a rare type of Crow Indian garment -- shirts made of cloth rather than tanned hide.
The body and sleeves are hand sewn of navy blue, woolen save list cloth (popularly known as stroud cloth or strouding.) As was common to embellish various articles of clothing, the maker left intact (natural white) selvage or list to accentuate the bottom margin of the body. The maker also added contrasting red wool to highlight the cuffs. Characteristic of Plains Indian shirts, a rectangular bib of red wool, decorated with lanes of beadwork is pendent from the neck opening, front and back. Beaded strips adorn the body and sleeves. The beadwork is executed in the Crow stitch technique (known also as modified lane stitch). In this technique the beads are strung on one thread, sometimes sinew, which is tacked down at intervals with a second thread. Streamers of ermine fur border the backside of the sleeve strips. Ermine are weasels in the winter/white color phase. Despite their relatively small size, ermine are pugnacious creatures. Therefore, Plains Indians widely considered ermine to be powerful war totem animals. Some tribes frequently adorned men's shirts, leggings, horned hats, and eagle feather war bonnets with tubular streamers made of ermine fur.
This shirt pertains to a genre of reduced length shirts that developed sometime during the mid-nineteenth century. Shirts of this type depart from the earlier, much longer garments prevalent in the pre-equestrian era. Around that time, Plains Indian shirts in general underwent a reduction in their length, differing considerably from the earlier, knee-length styles. Extra short shirts, such as this example, are decidedly uncommon -- yet they comprise a recognizable object type. Because these abbreviated garments extended only to about the wearer's waist, they were considerably more practical and comfortable to wear when mounting or riding a horse.
Benson L. Lanford
April 26, 2005
The body and sleeves are hand sewn of navy blue, woolen save list cloth (popularly known as stroud cloth or strouding.) As was common to embellish various articles of clothing, the maker left intact (natural white) selvage or list to accentuate the bottom margin of the body. The maker also added contrasting red wool to highlight the cuffs. Characteristic of Plains Indian shirts, a rectangular bib of red wool, decorated with lanes of beadwork is pendent from the neck opening, front and back. Beaded strips adorn the body and sleeves. The beadwork is executed in the Crow stitch technique (known also as modified lane stitch). In this technique the beads are strung on one thread, sometimes sinew, which is tacked down at intervals with a second thread. Streamers of ermine fur border the backside of the sleeve strips. Ermine are weasels in the winter/white color phase. Despite their relatively small size, ermine are pugnacious creatures. Therefore, Plains Indians widely considered ermine to be powerful war totem animals. Some tribes frequently adorned men's shirts, leggings, horned hats, and eagle feather war bonnets with tubular streamers made of ermine fur.
This shirt pertains to a genre of reduced length shirts that developed sometime during the mid-nineteenth century. Shirts of this type depart from the earlier, much longer garments prevalent in the pre-equestrian era. Around that time, Plains Indian shirts in general underwent a reduction in their length, differing considerably from the earlier, knee-length styles. Extra short shirts, such as this example, are decidedly uncommon -- yet they comprise a recognizable object type. Because these abbreviated garments extended only to about the wearer's waist, they were considerably more practical and comfortable to wear when mounting or riding a horse.
Benson L. Lanford
April 26, 2005