While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Bags and Pouches. Many varieties of bags and pouches were
made by the Indians of the United States and were used for a great number of
purposes. The costume of the aborigines was universally destitute of pockets,
and various pouches served in their stead. On occasion articles were tucked away
in the clothing or were tied up in bits of cloth or skin. The blanket also
served at times for a bag, and among the Eskimo the woman s coat was enlarged
over the shoulders and at the back to form a pouch for carrying the baby. The
pouch was a receptacle of flexible material for containing various objects and
substances of personal use or ceremony, and was generally an adjunct of costume.
The bag, larger and simpler, w r as used for the gathering, transportation, and
storage of game and other food. The material was tawed leather of various kinds,
tanned leather, rawhide, fur skins, skins of birds; the bladder, stomach or
pericardium of animals; cord of babiche, buckskin or wool, hair, bark, fiber,
grass, and the like; basketry, cloth, beadwork, etc. Rectangular or oval pouches
were made with a flap or a gathering-string and with a thong, cord, or strap for
attaching them at the shoulder or to the belt. The Eskimo had pouches with a
flap that could be wrapped many times around and secured by means of a string
and an ivory fastener. The Zuñi use, among others, crescent-shaped pouches into
the horns of which objects are thrust through a central opening. Bags showed
less variety of form. They were square or oblong, deep or shallow, flat or
cylindrical. Many of these were provided with a shoulder band, many with a
carrying-strap and a forehead band. The Eskimo bag was provided with an ivory
handle, which was frequently decorated with etching. Small pouches were used for
holding toilet articles, paint, medicine, tobacco, pipes, ammunition, trinkets,
sewing tools, fetishes, sacred meal, etc. Large pouches or bags, such as the
bandoleer pouch of the Chippewa, held smaller pouches and articles for personal
use.
Bags were made for containing articles to be packed on horses, frequently joined
together like saddlebags. The tribes of the far N. made use of large sleeping
bags of fur. Most bags and pouches were ornamented, and in very few other
belongings of the Indian were displayed such fertility of invention and such
skill in the execution of the decorative and symbolic designs. Skin pouches,
elaborately ornamented with beadwork, quillwork, pigments, and dyes, were made
by various tribes. Decorated bags and wallets of skin are characteristic of the
Aleut, Salish, Nez Percé, the northern
Athapascan and
Algonquian tribes, and the Plains Indians. Bags of textiles and
basketry are similarly diversified. Especially note worthy are the muskemoots of
the Thlingchadinne, made of babiche, the bags of the Nez Percé,
made of apocynum fiber and corn-husks, the woven hunting bags of northern
woodland tribes, and the painted rawhide pouches and bags of the tribes of the
great plains.
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906
