Breechcloth

Breechcloth; probably Yanktonai; 1860-1870Wool, porcupine quills, sinew, metal, horsehair, pigments; 117.5 x 28.5 cm.\RMV 710-9; Herman F.C. ten Kate collection; purchased from trader at Niagara Falls in 1882Breechcloths were one of the most common clothing items worn by men on the Plains in historic times. Today, a modified version is worn for pow wows and other celebrations. Its construction is simple. A single long piece of fabric or Native (brain) tanned hide goes between the legs, up to the waist, and then ends hang down in front and back, held on the body with a belt around the hips. It is probable that Native people have used this item of clothing for many generations. Leggings, an item of clothing that is just the legs of pants, were attached to the same belt that held the breechcloth. In fact, breechcloths with leggings allow more freedom of movement than pants. When running, riding a horse, or walking, the combination of breechcloth and leggings gives the wearer more freedom of movement because the material of the two is separate. Plains Indian pictographic drawings that illustrate warriors often depict men wearing breechcloth and leggings. In some cases, the drawings show the men wearing Calvary pants, often depicted as blue cloth with a yellow/gold stripe running down the back of the leg, that have been modified into leggings. They cut the legs out of the trade pants and wear them as leggings.\nThe Leiden breechcloth is an unusual example. Historically, breechcloths were not highly decorated because they got dirty quickly and were reasonably disposable. This example is made of trade wool commonly known as stroud. When Euro-American traders brought this wool made in the town of Stroud in Gloucestershire County, England, it quickly became the preferred material for fashioning garments and blankets. Stroud with white edging was highly desired by Native people, because the stripe could be used as a design element. Stroud cloth is still used today by Native Americans to decorate their dance outfits. The large rodent inhabits large areas of North America and is abundant on the Plains. The protective quills, which are pointy and hollow, are harvested from the animal, cleaned, sorted, and dyed (if desired). When they are ready to be used, they are moistened, and then flattened with either a tool or between the teeth. Among the Lakota in historic times, quillworking was a sacred art, and only an initiated woman could undertake quilling projects. On the Plains there are two basic techniques when decorating with quills: appliquéing them to a surface through a process of folding and stitching, or wrapping them around a core. \In this work, the appliqué process often referred to as zigzag, was used on the medallions and the horizontal strips. In this process, thread or sinew is sewn over the flattened quill, which is then folded over the stitch then brought across about 3/8 inch (9.5mm) and stitched again. It is folded back next to the first stitch and re-stitched. Essentially, the stitched quills form a zigzag pattern. A new quill is incorporated when the end of one quill (quills range from 1-3 inches [2.5-7.6cm], but the longer the better) has been reached. Using this method, a row of quillwork can be very long. The same technique is used on the medallions. Instead of zigzagging in a straight line, the artist made concentric circles.\nThe other quillworking technique found on this breechcloth is wrapping. Each quill is wrapped around a base (in this case, the rawhide strips that are on each end of this work), and each quill is wrapped next to the previous wrap. When the end of a quill is reached, a new quill is folded into the previous quill and the wrapping continues. In this object, dyed red quills were used for the inverted U shapes. It seems probable that this shape symbolizes horse tracks. A tin cone with horse hair was added at the end of each quill wrapped rawhide strip, which would make the garment sound when it moved. Based on the rarity of this porcupine quill decorated breechcloth, it seems likely that this object would have been worn only for special occasions, and its owner had taken horses from the enemy (also cf. Hovens 2010:236).\nJoe Horse Capture \national Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC, \nPieter Hovens et.al, The Ten Kate Collection, 1882-1888: American Indian Material Culture; National Museum of Ethnology and ZKF Publishers; Leiden and Altenstadt, 2010.\Nowhere is the English text? Yanktonai breechcloth; wool, porcupine quills, metal, horsehair; l. 117.5 cm, w. 28.5 cm.; ca. 1870s.\It is not known whether the breechcloth was a traditional item of dress on the Plains, or was the result of contacts with Anglo-Americans. The latter is suggested by the fact that almost all preserved early specimens are made of trade cloth (Schneider 1976:7-8,17). Blackfeet elsewhere stated that in early days young men made breechcloths from the top part of tipi covers where the smoke had mellowed the skin, and made it soft (Walton et.al. 1985:146). In the course of the 19th century Indian men began wearing this item of dress made from blue or red stroud, obtained in trade. The Yanktonais and Yanktons wore their breechcloth which meant that it was looped over a hip-belt with the cloth hanging a few inches over it at the back, and about a foot in the front. The quillwrapped fringes show four horsetrack designs. The cone-shaped metal tinklers with tufts of dyed horsehair are frequently encountered on Sioux garments since the 1850s, increase in frequency in the 1870-1890 period, and then steadily decline (Gallagher and Powell 1953). A breechcloth similar to the Leiden specimen, made by the wife of Two Bears, was in the collection of the Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont, but was discarded or exchanged. It came from the collection of O.B. Read (Markoe 1986:171). The Leiden example is an exceptionally fine one, and was probably used only for special occasions.‖ (Hovens 2008-09)‖ Men wore loincloths of skin, later of imported cloth, around their waists. The fringe of porcupine quills with horsehoe patterns is very rare. The rosette motif is more common.‖ CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES: production and decoration The wealth of the Plains consisted of the immense bison herds. The bison not only provided food. The hide of this animal was used for tents, clothing, satchels, horse harnesses, shields, knife blades, folding bags, etc. Before the bison skin could be processed into clothing etc., it had to be treated to make it supple and durable. The tanning was done in a mixture that included bone marrow, ground intestines and cactus juice. Deer hides were also popular for making clothing because of their light weight, light colour and supple character. Often women's clothing was made from them. After their pretreatment, the bison and deer skins were processed and decorated by painting and appliqué of porcupine quills and beads. This decorative art took off on the Plains and in regions adjacent to it.‖ The long pens of porcupine quills (Erethizon dorsatus), called quills, were popular materials for decorating garments. Although this animal occurred on only a small portion of the Plains, the pens were available throughout the Plains through intertribal trade. Only the Black Hills of South Dakota was home to the porcupine, and the Teton Dakota of this area used the pens most extensively to decorate their clothing and implements. In times of scarcity, pens made from bird feathers, certain grass cuttings, and strips of corn and fern leaves were also used.ââ'¬Â The pens were flattened or not and then boiled to make them pliable. During the cooking, natural mineral and vegetable dyes were added to dye the pens. The colour red was obtained from certain berries or the inner bark of the river urchin. Yellow was obtained from the petals of the sunflower, the bud of the poplar or the roots of the tannery tree. Some nuts produced a black dye. Iron oxide and tannin from plants worked as fixatives. The colour effect was enhanced by cutting off the ends of the pins to allow the paint to penetrate better into the pores and hollow pins. The colour palette expanded considerably when white traders introduced aniline paints in the late nineteenth century. Prior to this, pens were also boiled together with European or American fabrics, causing the pens to take on the color of the textile.‖ The flat painted pens were usually applied in geometric patterns to leather, especially garments such as shirts and mocas-sins. They were also used to decorate pipe-bags, bags, cradles and other utensils. The ends of the pins were often notched in the leather or attached with a thin bison cord. Stitches were camouflaged by folding the pin over them. A wrapping technique was also used to decorate leather fringes, tufts of hair and pipe stems. Sometimes the pins were interwoven before being fixed on leather. Geometrical patterns vary from stripes and bars to triangles and diamonds. Depending on the course of the stitches, patterns can also take more naturalistic forms. By combining wavy stitches and narrow bands one can obtain stylized images of mythological figures and people, later also animals and flowers.\ The pencil work was a female occupation. The Tetons and Cheyennes even had separate societies for women who devoted themselves to this technique and were aware of the spiritual power of the decorative figures. The most experienced and therefore usually older woman acted as a mentor and teacher. Inspiration for penwork pa-trons was often obtained in dreams, for Plains Indians a proof of their spiritual origin. Especially patterns that offered protection against misfortune and adversity were sensed, including the mythological thunderbirds and panthers. These were applied to baby cribs, warriors' clothing, etc. Quillwork was gradually supplanted after the introduction of western beads. Beads were initially made from shells and animal teeth and applied individually to clothing. They could also be sewn onto clothing unprocessed, which was especially done with cowrie shells and moose teeth on the tops of women's clothes. The beads of Venetian glass introduced in the sixteenth century were very expensive and were therefore of limited use. Nevertheless, they reached the Plains through inter-tribal trade. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, fur-trading firms began to introduce large and inexpensive beads, often called China or Crow beads, as a means of exchange. After 1800, the somewhat smaller "pony bead" was available, opaque and still relatively large. After the introduction around 1840 of small glass beads, called seed beads, the latter quickly became predominant. These beads came mainly from Bohemia, and to a lesser extent from France, Germany and the Netherlands. They were always available, cheap and in many colours and shades, which opened up new ways of aesthetic expression. In many tribes, porcupine quillwork was almost entirely supplanted by beadwork, and the patterns of early beadwork show similarities to those of quillwork. With the lazy-stitch, where a series of beads were strung together, applied and secured with the same thread, geometric figures were formed which could cover large areas. Geometric figures include lines, squares, rectangles and triangles. The hourglass motif is common and consists of a double triangle of which one is the mirror image of the other. With the spot stitch. (also called overlay stitch) beads were strung together and a second thread was used to stitch the beads in a straight or curved line. This way circles, flower motifs and animal figures could be applied. Geometric motifs on the Plains are older than figurative pen and bead embellishments.‖ Patterns for beadwork were influenced in the nineteenth century in part by Indians seeing carpets with Oriental motifs and partially copying them, whether in modified form or not. The floral style of beadwork, with its characteristic flower and leaf motifs, was developed in the early nineteenth century mainly by the Indo-European white mixed population in the Red River area, the so-called Métis. These mestizos were mostly the offspring of mixed-race unions between white fur traders and Indian women, particularly from the Chippewa and Cree tribes, but also from other Algonkin tribes and Iroquois peoples from the Great Lakes region. The floral style spread from 1830 on by trade contacts over the area west of the Great Lakes like with the Santee Sioux and Assiniboin and the adjacent northern Plains where the Yanktonai paved the way for the new style. Iowa, Oto, and Osage followed this trend, but were also influenced by the decorative styles of eastern tribes that were pushed further and further west by the advancing white settlers. Their beadwork is not only curvilinear, but also uses strongly contrasting colours and beads to fill up the spaces between figures. The popularity of this style among the tribes of the eastern Plains has led to its designation as "Prairie Style". Some pre-Columbian curved and floral motifs are already found in the Ohio Valley and the South Oots. Floral motifs of European origin are especially found in the work of women who attended white schools. Towards the end of the nineteenth century more naturalistic beadwork was produced in which images of people and animals were used. Some tribal styles developed of which the Crow style is the most recognizable because of its simple combined triangular and block motifs, the simultaneous use of primary and pastel colors and by surrounding the patterns with several rows of mainly white but also other color beads to increase the color contrast. They also apply their own stitch, the Crow stitch, a variation of the spot stitch. This style was adopted by tribes from the adjoining Rocky Mountain region (Flathead, Nez Percé) and therefore referred to as ÒTransmontane.Ó Typical of women's clothing was the decoration of the upper part of leather dresses. Prior to the arrival of the whites, this was often dyed and decorated with horizontal rows of cowrie shells or moose teeth. When trade relations were established, the shells and teeth were applied to an undercoat of dark blue fabric, which made their pale colour stand out better. Also, this part of the clothing, including sleeves, was often decorated with a "yoke," a contiguous panel of beads.* Colors, hues and patterns had meaning, depending on the tribe, the family group or even the maker. However, it is often difficult, if not impossible, in retrospect to unlock these meanings. A universally valid symbolism was lacking.‖ Beaded appliqué developed as a means of communicating social status. Women who mastered this technique well received a larger dowry than others who mastered this craft to a lesser degree. Material wealth enabled men to exempt their wives from some of their daily labour so that they could spend their time decorating clothing and utensils. These were then worn on occasions as an expression of status and prestige, both of the man and the woman.‖ What was true of the beaded decoration of clothing such as shirts, dresses, leggings and moccasins was also true of the beaded decoration of all sorts of accessories: belts, small and large bags, messchets, e.d.In 1883 Ten Kate visited an Ute reservation in Colorado and the Cheyenne and Arapahore reservations in Indian Territory, later Oklahoma). About the clothing of the Plains Indians, he made the following observations (1885:315,357-8): \" The (Ute) men still wear almost exclusively leather leggings of Indian make and moccasins, while the upper body, on the other hand, is generally covered by an ordinary shirt and vest. The leggings of the Utes and the Indians in general differ from our trousers in that they only cover the legs, but not the abdomen or the posterior region either. They are fastened by means of bands, which are connected at the side to a band around the waist, as well as by a ghost ring, which runs between the legs. These leggings are usually beautifully decorated with colourful beads. ... As for the Utes' jewelry, it consists mainly of strings of beads, a kind of seashell plastrons, as well as silver and Berlin silver ear- and finger rings and bracelets. They buy the beads and seashells, as well as the objects made of Berlin silver, in the trader's store. ... The Utes get their silverware from the Navajos, their southwestern neighbours. ... As for the clothing of both tribes (Cheyennes and Arapahos), only the leggings and shoes are original. Leggings and moccasins are made of beautifully tanned soft leather, tastefully decorated with colourful, especially blue and white, beads; the leggings also sometimes have round Berlin silver plates. The men also generally wear trouser legs - because the rest of what belongs to a trouser is missing - of thick dark blue cloth with fluttering wide edges and entirely of Indian cut; furthermore they wear a covering, consisting of two blue woollen blankets sewn together, which not only forms a hood for the head, but is also large enough to envelope their entire figure. Often they drape themselves picturesquely in their blankets, as they once did their coats of bison skin...On the Plains, different style areas are distinguished on the basis of the most common traditional beaded patterns. On the Canadian part of the Plains and in the adjoining border area of the United States the Northern-geometrical style predominates, characterized by chequered patterns. These can be applied horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Connected triangular figures such as the hourglass motif are also characteristic, as well as horizontal bands. These motifs are mainly found on clothing and utensils of the Blackfoot, Assiniboin and Yanktonai. The central Plains style has several characteristics which may or may not occur simultaneously: large background areas set with white or blue beads, angular additions to geometric patterns, influenced by patterns on imitation Persian carpets. The northern Arapahos, northern Cheyennes and Tetons are representatives of this style. After 1885 more and more naturalistic bead patterns appeared on clothing and utensils, especially horses and warriors. The Crow beadwork style deviated somewhat, following the patterns characteristic of geometric parfleche painting. The southern Plains style was characteristic of the southern Arapahos, southern Cheyennes, Comanches, Kiowas, and Pawnees. Appliqué is usually limited to borders, hems, and narrow decorative stripes. Sometimes threads and beads are interwoven before being applied.The appliqué of beads almost completely supplanted pinwork. As a rethinking of traditional tribal cultures slowly began after World War II, it also manifested itself in the revival of quill work. This technique is extremely labor intensive, however, so it is usually applied to small areas: rosettes on clothing, jewelry, etc. Often porcupine quills are also threaded and then attached to leather, a less labor intensive method than traditional appliqué. Virtually only among the Sioux is there an unbroken continuity of pen work from prehistoric times. Some men have also applied themselves to it. Beadwork has always remained popu-lar and received a new impetus through the organization of powwows, feasts where members of many Plains tribes gathered. Competition between women promoted quality. Exchange of ideas and experience led to the slow disappearance of typical tribal styles in beaded appliqué. For this purpose, animal skins were first treated with animal and plant oils and juices. Women painted clothes with abstract geometric symbols. Elements that frequently occurred were a sun motif, concentric circles of stylized feathers and "box-and-border" patterns where the edges of the clothing are provided with a narrow border and in the middle of the clothing a rectangle is indicated with a geometric motif, sometimes repeating the motif of the border. This last pattern was often found on complete bison skins worn by women as coats. The feather motif was usually found on men's clothing. On clothing, shields and tent-coverings naturalistic figures of images obtained in visions were also applied. This was mainly done by men. Healing and protective powers were attributed to these figures for the wearer of the clothing and the occupant of the tepee. Within the naturalistic direction are the pictographically stylized images of people and animals on clothing, loose skins and tent decks. The images are narrative and often tell events from the life of the wearer of the clothing: hunting scenes, war scenes, etc.One western introduction was ribbon appliqué on clothing. This technique was found especially on the southern Plains where Native American women came into contact not only with white women, but especially with the Indians who had been deported from the eastern United States to Oklahoma. These groups had been in contact with whites for some time and had learned the ribbon appliqué technique from them. Certain geometric patterns and stylized forms of plants are characteristic of Native American clothing that was decorated with colored ribbon. This form of decoration of clothing virtually supplanted pen work on the Southern Plains. Ribbon appliqué was actively practiced by the southern Siouans (Iowas, Osages, Omahas, Poncas, Otos, Kaws) and Caddoans (Caddos, Pawnees, Wichitas).\ (PH, 2000)