The object is the shirt of a Yanktonai Sioux Man. It matches leggings #50.67.3b-c. It is constructed of soft light tan pliable leather. The sides of the shirt are open and have leather thongs to lace them together. The lower edge of the shirt is cut into short rectangles like a fringe. The large triangular bibs frame the neck, one at the front of the shirt, and one at the back, and are decorated with red and black dots. The neck is decorated with dark blue cut glass beads spaced about 1 1/2 inches apart. The lower edges of the shirt, the sleeve cuffs, and the triangular neckpieces are decorated with diamond-shaped perforations in lines, triangles and face patterns. There is a porcupine quill medallion in the center of the chest at the bottom point of the triangle. It is made up of concentric rings of red, blue, yellow, brown, and white plaited quills. The seams of the shoulders and the sleeves are decorated with leather fringes and red and blue quills wrapped around hair bundles. Among some tribes it is believed that hair carries some of the characteristics of the person or animal from which it comes. Therefore, using hair in clothing may give the wearer additional strength, speed, or another positive attribute. Each sleeve is decorated on the underside with a series of seven black lines. The body of the shirt is also decorated with drawings of hunting scenes that include horses, a bison, and spears. Holes in the leather are backed with red stroud cloth. Stroud cloth is a coarse, close-weave wool textile that was imported from England and commonly used among Native Americans in garments and blankets. Red was the most frequently used color although navy and green were also produced and traded, and the colored selvedges were often prized as decorative elements. The shirt is in stable condition. There is old insect damage to the medallion quills. Many of the quills are faded. Also, some of the red stroud cloth patches have old insect damage. A leather tassel is torn along decorative perforations. See additional material in Jarvis report in Arts of Americas' files.

This double headed, shallow drum is made of skin stretched over a frame. The hide surface is laced close. A projection of stiff rawhide from the top of the drum is now mostly missing. However, the Fort Snelling military officer and artist, Seth Eastman, drew this particular example, showing that this projection originally represented a bird, possibly a thunderbird. The handle is on the right side if the drum is held upright, as shown in the Eastman sketch. There are native repairs on the reverse. The painted design on one side is now brown with darker outlining. Original notes made by Larson on the Eastman sketch list concentric circles from the outside in: "red, deep yellow and yellowish." In addition, the central and largest ovoid field, formerly yellowish and now simply lighter in color, is painted with a smaller brownish (formerly red?) ovoid at the center. This form in turn is surrounded by even smaller circles or dots on the palest ovoid filed, which may have once been yellow and red.

The mocassins are constructed with smoked buckskin that is gathered into a series of small folds or "puckers" by seams running from the area above the toes to the area below the ankle. The seams are decorated by quillwork made up of orange lines and centered white and dark purple triangles crossed by a series of four additional linear designs. The seams of the heel are decorated in simple configured quillwork bands of white, light blue, and dark purple crosses. Cuffs are added onto the mocassins as separate semi-circular pieces of deerskin with quilled borders containing an undulating dark purple band and several straight lines. Metal cones, stuffed with dyed red deer hair are suspended from the edges of the cuffs.

Brooklyn Museum Collection

This white buckskin shirt, with the faint remnants of a pinkish stain in the general shoulder area, has a squared cloth bib and cuffs made of red Stroud cloth. This bib has been attached with knotted lengths of buckskin thong. Both bib and cuffs are decorated with white seed beads and additional pony beads are sewn onto the bib. A line of chain stitch embroidery in blue decorates the bib at the front while the back of the bib is plain. A rosette on the front center of the shirt is decorated with reddish-orange and white porcupine quills and brown maidenhair fern stems that are in a configuration that probably represent a thunderbird. Bird quills in white, green, and brown are wrapped around the rawhide strips that are suspended from each shoulder. Additional fringe is inserted in each sleeve seam, which is wrapped at the base with red bird quills and white porcupine quills. Four long, pierced strips, two suspended under each sleeve, are also fringed. Horizontal reddish stripes are painted on the back of the shirt. A rectangular shaped repair, which appears to be of native origin, located on the front of the proper right shoulder, has been reattached to the long pierced tab by a knotted string of hide that matches the existing fringe. See Jarvis research file in Arts of Americas office.

Decorated bags similar to this in size are sometimes referred to as "firebags" or "shot pouches" because they often held tobacco, flint and steel or a piece of touchwood for starting fires. This hide pouch combines elements of floral design and geometric patterns. Only one side of the pouch is decorated. The top of the pouch is quill embroidered with three simple foliate forms that contain alternating stems from which emerge bi-lobed leaves. The three plants grow from a crescent shape, a shape that may be read as a seed pod. Two quill woven strips that contain geometric forms are attached to the pouch. Both of these strips have white grounds with four major design elements on each, interspersed with small triangles and crosses. The top strip starts at the left with an eight-pointed star which is red at the center, then outlined in white on a brown field, outlined in turn in pink and the outer edge bordered in blue. The second element is also eight-pointed, as if a square and diamond are combined. At its center, a brown rectangle is surrounded by a larger rectangle of orange and red, then a white border, a blue border, then a pink border with projections at right and left, still another blue border, a white border, and finally, a brown border as the outer edge of the same form. The third element design is the same as the second and the fourth form is the same as the first. On the second, woven loomed quill strip, the first form on the left is an eight-pointed star with a brown and red checkered rectangle at center, surrounded by a white border on a blue field, surrounded in turn by a pink border, and then finally outlined in brown. The second form is irregular and may be described as a vertically oriented rectangle with a pronounced point emerging at right and left. At the center is a reddish strip, bordered and crossed horizontally in white, on a brown field that is surrounded by a blue border, then a pink border, a brown one, a white one, and then a final blue outline. The third element is the same as the second and the fourth is the same as the first. See supplemental Jarvis file in Arts of Americas' office.

Black cotton cap with red cotton band that is decorated with red, white, blue, and yellow beads. A red cloth tassel is on the top. Worn. Alternate number was 18516 and 32.1154

These child's moccasins have the old style seam work typical of Cree. The beads go in two different directions, unusual. They have little trail dusters and are made all in one piece with one seam along the side.

Charles Stewart Smith Memorial Fund

Crow moccasins. The quillwork is called Fort Berthold quillwork, a form of hatch quillwork done in North Dakota. It is unusual to see them on moccasins and this pair is very fine. They would not have been worn during a sun dance but used to slip on the feet when the dancer left the sun dance circle, or stepped out of the ring. The Hidatsa Arikara also made the sun design but the Sioux are the only ones who continued to do this design.