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A young Manda woman named the Mink posed for Catlin wearing a dress that, while later in style than the side-fold dress, was also decorated with beaded disks. Engraving from Catlin's Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians , 1841. |
Woman's Side Fold Dress Side-fold dresses are a little-known type that seem to have been made and worn by women living west and north of the Great Lakes during the early nineteenth century. In 1984, Norman Feder published an article indicating that he could locate only ten examples (including the two shown here) in the world's museums, although they also appear in the paintings of European frontier artists such as Rudolph F. Kurz and Karl Bodmer. This is one of two known side fold dresses that are painted; the other is in the collections of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. Few of the dresses examined by Feder were well-documented, but the side-fold style seems to have been worn by Dakota, Lakota, and Cree women, and possibly also by Cheyenne and Assiniboin women. Lewis and Clark are known to have encountered a party of Cree at Fort Mandan during November of 1804. This two-hide dress has been impressed and painted with red and dark brown pigment, a decorative convention among some Cree groups. However, it is also possible that this dress was made by a woman from the Upper Missouri area. Indigo and blue-green beaded discs adorn the yoke and a beaded strip has been added to the skirt. The hem is tabbed and the skirt fringe was originally wrapped with dyed orange quills. |
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Native American Objects and the American Quest for Commerce and Science Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University |
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