<previous -index- next>

		Biographical Warrior's Shirt Upper Missouri River (Mandan?) Deer hide, dyed horse hair, unidentified hair, unidentifiedplant material, dyed and undyed porcupine quills, dyed bird quills, sinew, glass beads, pigments L: 119 cm W:159.5 cm PM#99-12-10/53041 Prominent men decorated and wore painted shirts as an expression of their social rank (including membership in men's societies) and to commemorate their achievements in battle. The drawings on this shirt indicate the war exploits of the owner. Only leaders wore shirts during the early nineteenth century, and few examples of biographical garments from that period survive today in museum collections. The cultural identity of the owner of this deer hide, open-sided shirt is difficult to determine. However, many features of this very early shirt, such as the thin, quill-plaited seam strips on the shoulders and the painting style, suggest a Central Plains or Upper Missouri River origin. Locks of colored hair, possibly both horse and human, are attached to the shoulder seams. The upper half of the shirt has been painted blue-green, the lower half yellow. This general style of shirt, often called war shirts or "deer-leg" shirts because the legs of dressed ungulate (such as deer and antelope) hides form the sleeves and appendages, persisted in the central and northern Plains throughout the nineteenth century. Both Lewis and Clark and Lt. Hutter acquired warrior's shirts that they later donated to the Peale Museum. Several chiefs presented shirts to Lewis and Clark, sometimes in exhange for Euroamerican garments. The Hutter family donated a "Mandan warrior's dress" to the Peale Museum in 1828.

	<previous -index- next> h o m e i n t r o o b j e c t s m a p r e s o u r c e s c r e d i t s The Ethnography of Lewis and Clark: Native American Objects and the American Quest for Commerce and Science Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University Copyright ©President and Fellows of Harvard College