Museum Expedition 1903, Museum Collection Fund

Collector Dr. Newcomb supplied Brooklyn Museum's curator, Dr. Stewart Culin with several gambling sets. There are few descriptions of how this gambling set would have been played so Dr. Newcomb’s notes are quite valuable. "When bundle of sticks is indicated as holding the trump, the sticks are thrown down on the sloping exterior of the mat one by one, thus showing the content of his hand." These were reported to belong to Chief Shakes. Despite their perfection they were made with no machine tools. Nine of them have abalone shell inlaid whose game function is unknown, the rest are painted. The hide bag container for the sticks was made from an older object, perhaps a tunic or hide armor. The design is hard to make out but might be part of a face. According to Newcombe the painted mat has a design of a killer whale, identifiable by its blow hole and flukes. The panting style is similar to that of Heiltsuk artists, found near Kikatla. Gambling mat is 05.588.7249.

These hide gloves are European styled. They have blue beads in a stripe around the thumb and in two stripes up the back of the glove. Inside the blue bead stripes are beaded plant forms of light green, red and dark green.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Blum

Brooklyn Museum Collection

A hide sack with flint and steel inside it. The steel has a double curve form, thicker than usual. Pouch has a jagged edge that Sean Standing Bear (10/24/2000) thinks relates it to lightening.

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.

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.