Bandolier Bag
Lenape (Delaware)
Mid-Atlantic Woodlands
Woodlands
about 1850
Glass beads, cotton cloth, ribbon, wool cloth, buttons, thread
Overall: 29 15/16 × 22 13/16 in. (76 × 58 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Miriam H. and S. Sidney Stoneman Acquisitions Fund
2008.93
Geography
Place Made: Oklahoma or Kansas, United States, North America
Period
19th century
Object Name
Personal Gear: Bag
Research Area
Native American
Native American: Woodlands
Not on view
Inscriptions
Old papter tag, inscribed, in graphite, in script: "Smoking pouch made by / Indians and given to James / H. Haynes, grandfather of F. R. / White, as an emblem of peace. / It was made and given to him / in the period of 1850. / Entered by F.R. White, / Cassville, Mo." [in Object File]
Label
Prior to the establishment of colonial trade networks, Indigenous women across North America ornamented clothing with highly valued goods such as paints, shell beads, elk teeth, porcupine quills, and other natural materials - obtained through wide-ranging intertribal trade networks. As new materials became available through colonial trade, Indigenous women innovated further, creating masterful works of great beauty and personal expression.
Curvilinear designs have long been central to Woodlands material culture, and the introduction of new ready-to-use materials such as glass beads and silk ribbon further enabled this aesthetic to flourish. This Lenape shoulder bag is a masterpiece, both in the appliqué technique used to create the design and in the artist’s color selection and use of abstraction to reflect the ancestral landscape of Lenape homelands.
From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art
Course History
ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022
GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022
Exhibition History
Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 8, 2011-March 12, 2012.
This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 5-May 3, 2022.
Publication History
George P. Horse Capture, Sr., Joe D. Horse Capture, Joseph M. Sanchez, et al., Native American Art at Dartmouth: Hightlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2011, ill. p. 23 and on p. 174, no. 149.
John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 116, ill. plate no. 47.
Provenance
Collected in Wichita Falls, Texas, not far from the Delaware Caddo Reservation in Oklahoma; given to James H. Haynes, about 1850; given to his grandson, F. R. White, Cassville, Missouri; Bonhams & Butterfields, Native American Art, Sale 16150, Lot number 3468, December 8, 2008, San Francisco, California; sold to present collection, December 8, 2008.
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