This fringe is made from a partially tanned strip of buffalo hide that is wrapped at the top with bird quills. Several lines of this quill wrapped fringe combine to form repeated blocks of color. Usually quillwork comes down longer. The top of the quilled section has a row of white beads that resemble olivella shells.Usually quillwork comes down longer.From left to right the blocks are: blue, black, and brown (perhaps once orange) repeated in sequence. .The shell beads are unusual and the porcupine quill and white beads come from over in the Minnesota area. It is too wide for a pipe bag. Possibly Mandan-Hidatsa area or Sioux.

Brooklyn Museum Collection

Fragment, missing the ends. Was woven as a headband.Might not be Plains but Woodlands.

Gift of Sasha Nyary and Family

Small size moccasins with a beaded edge in pink, green and white toes. Crow, made from recycled Crow parfleches as design remants can be seen on the bottom .

Bequest of W.S. Morton Mead

These are Crow or Ute mocassins. Crow and Ute mix floral and geometric beadwork designs.

Bequest of W.S. Morton Mead

Probably Apache because of the use of the black beads. Some pieces of cotton thread in the back. Could be a paint bag.

The Jarvis Collection

Many of the articles in this case (and the adjacent clothing case), some of the earliest and finest Eastern Plains pieces in existence, were collected by Dr. Nathan Sturges Jarvis, a military surgeon stationed at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, between 1833 and 1836. Most items were made by the Eastern and Middle Dakota (Sioux) or by the peoples of the Red River region, including the Red River Métis, Anishinabe, Plains Cree, and Salteaux. Some of the objects were purchased by Jarvis, and some may have been given to him in exchange for his medical services.

These works demonstrate indigenous ingenuity in combining trade materials such as cloth, metal, and glass beads with traditional hides, pipestone, and porcupine and bird quills. For comparison, a few examples collected later by Nathan Jarvis, Jr., during his army service in the Western Territories among the Apache and other Plains peoples are also included. These items clearly show the later indigenous preference for multicolored glass trade beads.