ART MASTERPIECE - Q~LEDBABYC~RCOVER Great Plains - SIOUX A Sioux Indian woman made the Quilled Baby Carrier Cover in the 1880's when your Great-Great-Grandparents lived. The Sioux Indians lived in South Dakota from the 1400s to the present day. The Sioux Indians moved a lot due to droughts in their former homeland, increasing population pressure and later the arrival of the white settlers who took Indian lands, forcing the tribes to move farther West. So this baby carrier was used quite often. (1ullkd nab\ (anlcr(~"\'1 The North American Indians were the only people in the world to use the prickly quills of the porcupine to make beautiful designs. First the Indian woman broke off the sharp points of the quill. Then they softened the quills with water and flattened then using either a stone or their teeth. They colored them with dyes made from plants. The Indian women then would have woven the porcupine quills on soft animal skins, such as deerskins, in a kind of braid work in which the ends were secured underneath. Beading / Painting / Carving Native Americans for Kids The Plains people were marvelous artists. Pipes: They carved pipes out of wood. Some were beautifully decorated. Painting: They made paints and natural dyes using berry juice and other plants in nature. Most paintings were action scenes - scenes of battle, of hunts, of warriors riding horses and warriors shooting bows and arrows. They often paiThented their Beads and Barter: weapons. Quillwork spread from the Woodland People to the Porcupine Quills: Plains People. The People Plains People wove were eager to trade pelts for geometric designs (squares, beads. The white man's beads triangles, diamonds) into came in many colors and their clothing, moccasins, were much easier to use than and other personal goods. porcupine quills. They did not use beads. They used porcupine quills. They Unlike the Woodland Islands, used quill pieces as small as where men did the beadwork, one eight of an inch (1/8") in the Plains, women did the and as large as 5" to create beadwork. The women were these designs. They used proud of their work. The men natural dyes, so their colors wore their clothes with pride. were tan, dull white, bright Their women might add 5 or red, vivid yellow, and black. 6 pounds of beads to a Their stitching was so perfect garment that was already and tiny that the end result heavy because it was made looked like beadwork. from animal hide. Ancient Voices A Museum to honor the least known people in North America, the Original Tribal Women Bead work & Quill work The quill work almost died out when the easy to work beads came into the women's lives, but thankfully more people today are learning the fine art of using quills Quill work (a form of embroidery) Quills were used to decorate clothing, mocassins, bags, and baskets. Only certain women were trained to collect and decorate with quills. They got the quills by throwing a blanket over a porcupine and could then pick the quills out of the blanket. Different sizes of quills were used for different types of embroidery. The quills were dyed different colors using natural dyes from plants and earth. After the quills were flattened they could be sewn to make designs. Quills were soaked in the mouth to soften. (An interesting fact about quills is that they contain an antibiotic, so when the women were using them and flattening them in their mouths they were in fact taking in medicine which kept them well. Once the beads came in this practice ended and sickness came upon them. This was found out in the past few years when a University study was done.) Birchbark baskets were decorated with quills. An awl was used to poke holes in the bark. Quills were placed in the holes to make designs. First Nations in Canada Women prayed before they worked with quills. In all First Nations, quillers were highly respected for their talents. Each First Nation has its own set of designs and colours which people used to decorate clothing, tipis, containers, and utensils. Through these works of art, people express who they are as individuals and as a community. This is an example of what kind of work is possible using the single-quill line technique. This is a small motif done in the Huron floral style. The quills are dyed with all natural dyes and the background material is brain tanned leather dyed with walnut hulls. Photo from Native Tech website NativeTech: Native American Technology and Art The End of the World Lakota story told by Jenny Leading Cloud (White River, Rosebud reservation, SD) to Richard Erdoes in 1967. Typed from Erdoes and Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends Somewhere at a place where the prairie and the Maka Sicha, the Badlands, meet, there is a hidden cave. Not for a long, long time has anyone been able to find it. Even now, with so many highways, cars and tourists, no one has discovered this cave. In it lives a woman so old that her face looks like a shriveled-up walnut. She is dressed in rawhide, the way people used to before the white man came. She has been sitting there for a thousand years or more, working on a blanket strip for her buffalo robe. She is making the strip out of dyed porcupine quills, the way ancestors did before the white traders brought glass beads to this turtle continent. Resting beside her, licking his paws, watching her all the time is Shunka Sapa, a huge black dog. His eyes never wander from the old woman, whose teeth are worn flat, worn down to little stumps, she has used them to flatten so many porcupine quills. A few steps from where the old woman sits working on her blanket strip, a huge fire is kept going. She lit this fire a thousand or more years ago and has kept it alive ever since. Over the fire hangs a big earthen pot, the kind some Indian peoples used to make before the white man came with his kettles of iron. Inside the pot, wojapi is boiling and bubbling. Wojapi is berry soup, good and sweet and red. That soup has been boiling in the pot for a long time, ever since the fire was lit. Every now and then the old woman gets up to stir the wojapi in the huge earthen pot. She is so old and feeble that it takes a while to get up and hobble over to the fire. The moment her back is turned, Shunka Sapa, the huge black dog starts pulling the porcupine quills out of her blanket strip. This way she never makes any progress, and her quillwork remains forever unfinished. The Sioux people used to say that if the old woman ever finishes her blanket strip, then at the very moment that she threads the last porcupine quill to complete the design, the world will come to an end. NativeTech: Native American Technology and Art Porcupine Quill Embroidery by Tara Prindle Porcupine Quillwork is perhaps the oldest form Native American embroidery, and was a widespread form of decoration for Great Lakes and Plains peoples living within the natural range of the porcupine. The quills are folded, twisted, wrapped, plaited and sewn using a wide range of techniques to embellish articles of clothing, bags, knifesheaths, baskets, and wooden handles and pipe stems. Delaware and Ojibway Quilled Knife Sheaths (Orchard 1984) Native Americans in 17th century New England were long familiar with quill embroidery, they used porcupine quills to decorate their clothing and accessories, and to decorate containers of birchbark as well. European accounts from the 1600's refer to several dye colors (black, blue, red and yellow for examples) for porcupine quills embroidered on baskets, bags and mats. A few rare examples of 17th century hemp and basswood bags have survived the centuries. A Mohegan bag woven of Indian Hemp in the 1600's has a design embroidered with purple-black porcupine quills. The design on the Mohegan bag consists of two thin horizontal bands of solid color placed within three thicker bands of solid color which has been further broken into a series of geometric diamond and triangular shapes around the circumference of the bag. Other accounts from the 1600's describing New England Native Americans, include descriptions of designs: birds, beasts, fishes and flowers in colors placed upon baskets. Dyed quills decorated moccasins in red, blue and violet; to the north, moose skin robes were dressed white and embroidered top to bottom a finger's breadth wide, with closed or open work figures of animals. Quill embroidery embellished the Penobscot pouches and bags of deer or mole skin. Exquisite Maliseet-Passamaquoddy quilled birchbark containers were not often produced after Native splint and sweetgrass basket manufacture became popular in the 1700's. Seneca and Sioux Quilled In general, quillworking flourished among Native Moccasins (Orchard 1984) Americans until the mid-1800's when glass beads became easily attainable through trade with Europeans. Later traditions of embroidery using glass beads were built upon techniques and designs in quillworking. Although considered a 'lost art' by many, Native Americans such as the Sioux, Cree and Ojibway and others still carry on the tradition of quill embroidery. Lakota - Dakota - Sioux Nation The Lakota (also Teton, Tetonwan, Teton Sioux) are a Native American tribe. They are part of a confederation of seven related Sioux tribes (the Oceti Sakowin or seven council fires) and speak Lakota, one of the three major dialects of the Sioux language.