Pair Woman's Parka & Trousers Item Number: E1073-0 from the National Museum of Natural History

Notes

FROM CARD: "PARKA FOUND 12/1975 TROUSERS FOUND 5/1976."Parka: Source of the information below: Inuvialuit Pitqusiit Inuuniarutait: Inuvialuit Living History, The MacFarlane Collection website, by the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre (ICRC), Inuvik, N.W.T., Canada (website credits here http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/posts/12 ), entry on this artifact http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/items/289 , retrieved 12-10-2019: Woman's parka. This is part of a set that includes trousers. The parka is made of reindeer skin with long rounded flaps front and back. The hood is made with white skin and extends past the shoulders to form triangular sections down the front and the back of the parka. On the side of the hood is a thin strip of dark stained intestine or stomach skin. The back of the hood, the upper arms, and the hem are decorated and finely pieced with many bands of light and dark cropped skin and snippets of red wool. There are long wolverine fur tassels on the top of the hood, on the chest, upper arms, back of shoulders, and middle back. The hood and the hem are trimmed with wolverine fur. The wolverine fur is stained red on the skin side. Reindeer are a domesticated variety of caribou. At the time Inuvialuit were trading at Fort Anderson the nearest reindeer were in Siberia. The reindeer hides used to make this parka probably came to the area through long distance trade networks that Inuvialuit and Inupiat developed throughout the western Canadian Arctic and Alaska and into Siberia.Trousers: Source of the information below: Inuvialuit Pitqusiit Inuuniarutait: Inuvialuit Living History, The MacFarlane Collection website, by the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre (ICRC), Inuvik, N.W.T., Canada (website credits here http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/posts/12 ), entry on this artifact http://www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca/items/278 , retrieved 12-10-2019: Woman's pants with stockings attached made from caribou hide with the hair on the outside. Small pieces of hide with white hair create stripes on the outside of the knees. The feet are made with white and lighter coloured belly skin. A piece of ground squirrel fur has been added at the top of the trousers. This is part of a set that includes a parka.