Dick S. Ramsay Fund

Brooklyn Museum Collection

Anonymous gift in memory of Dr. Harlow Brooks

This is a classic style of Northern Arapaho cradle except instead of hide it was made of muslin. The quilled disc is a design element that is symbolic for protecting the brain of the baby and is made with sacred colors of red, yellow and black. The lacings represent the baby's ribs, arms, and legs. There are ladder like bands of quillwork that frame the child's face flopping over like braids. The cradle is fashioned over a bent willow hoop. The Arapaho had a Sacred Guild of Quill workers. After initiation quill workers were allowed to make a type of holy embroidery with symbolic designs. Work was restricted to a few objects and four specific colors representing four directions. The cradle is like a tipi as it houses the baby like a tipi houses the family and tribe so both men and women are represented. The disc is a traditional Arapaho design done a lot by the Women's Society of Quill workers. The Shoshone/Arapaho started making these types again in the 1970s and they might still be making them. Possibly matches with cradle strap 05.568.

Dick S. Ramsay Fund

This side fold dress consists of six pieces: the main body of the dress, the flounce, the shoulder flap, the top bodice, and two hide thongs as a second shoulder strap. The horizontal seam is low and the folded over portion is shorter and would barely cover the breast. The folded over flap is even shorter in the back. The hide is worked so that the flesh side of the skin lies against the wearer, with the fur side out. The flounce is laced with hide thong. The seam of the dress, the blue and white pony beads on the shoulder strap, and the hem tabs are all sewn. It is likely that the two bottom tabs at the left side of the dress are formed from a remnant of the foreleg of the animal or are a decorative form to resemble this pattern technique imitating the animal's legs. Ten quilled stripes are worked around the skirt of the dress, horizontally, in measured registers of blue (once blue-green but faded since original BMA acquisition) and brown quill, separated by shorter sections of white porcupine quill where red tufts, once the tassels, of yarn emerge. Small black lines separate each quilled section. Some vertical marks of what is probably ochre appear at the ends of the quilled bands. Tin cones and a few copper cones are sewn to the bottom of the flounce, more or less at knee length, and on the two bottom tabs, which are further elaborated with an edging of blue and white beads. Five pairs of copper cones are sewn up the side seam. If the shoulder strap is examined from above, blue and white beads can be seen ornamenting the seams. A single row or blue beads edges the sides while the front and back seams display eight bands of two rows of white beads alternating with two rows of blue pony beads. See Jarvis supplemental file in Arts of Americas office or Brooklyn Museum Library.

The sheath is made of a folded piece of rawhide with quill work embroidery along the edge in alternating lengths of red, blue, black and yellow. A piece of soft buckskin is wrapped around the top as a panel or cuff. The added piece is decorated with quillwork; a white field with alternating triangles of blue and black, underlined with orange (formerly red?) arranged in rows. The top and bottom of this cuff are decorated with narrow borders composed of red and white triangles. The entire pattern is outlined with a thin blue line. The narrow borders continue part way around to the back of the sheath, but the quill work pattern does not. Tin cones dangle from the top two corners of the sheath from hide thongs wrapped with red and blue quills and from the bottom of the cuff on thongs wrapped with red quills. These thongs are threaded through the tin cones to form decorative loops that protect their ends. There is a native repair on the reverse side of the sheath.

Also has a number 33 on it. This pipe stem has very nice Sioux quillwork, very tiny and tight woven bands.

Probably Lakota because they were major quill workers, the bladder bag contains many dyed porcupine quills.