Hand tanned (deer?)hide, possibly stained with ochre or vermillion, hawk feathers, quills (natural white and dyed red and black), size 8 greasy turquoise pony beads, copper or brass cones, red dyed hair,

Flat hide strips with quill wrapping set in six rows cover the front of the panel. Hanging from the bottom, and attached on the back, are 3 pairs of quill wrapped thongs terminating in brass cones with white and red dyed hair. On one end there is an appendage of 9 hawk feathers (possibly two more now missing) constructed in like manner to the one of crow feathers on 242007.000 garters. On the other end, there is an appendage of 5 quill wrapped tassles made of thongs cut from one piece, but all one length, and terminating in brass cones with white and red dyed hair. This end also has a bigger and longer appendage of red dyed and black tipped hair. There is a quill wrapped loop at both ends, possibly to do with tying onto leg.

Design of three cross-like shapes of mainly red with black vertical borders and black and white checkerboard in middles. White ground in between. Borders of hide with turquoise pony beads sewn on in running stitch to set them at intervals. Some damage to feathers.

AM suggests that the stain on the band may be from wearing paint on the legs or neck, as they do among Plains nations. She also thinks the design, motifs and type of quillwork is similar to that of the Plains.

Collected between 1793 and 1795. Materials and style suggest no earlier than 1750 for place of acquisition (CW).

The items in the Foster Collection were collected by Lieutenant (later Captain) Andrew Foster of the Twenty-fourth Regiment of Foot, while posted at Fort Miami (Detroit) and Michilimackinac, between August 1793 and August 1796, at which time the Regiment was withdrawn to Montreal. During this period Lieutenant Foster was instrumental in surveying and building the British fort on St. Joseph Island, among other duties. The collection remained with the Foster family until 1936, when they donated it to the Wells Museum (Wells, Somerset, UK), which then sold it to a Mr. Robert Abels on an unrecorded date. Some time “recently” prior to August 1966, Abels sold it to George Terasaki, a New York dealer. In 1968, the Museum of the American Indian (George Gustuv Heye’s museum in New York) made an exchange of selected artifacts with Terasaki in order to acquire the, now well-documented, Foster Collection. In 1990, it became part of the holdings of the Smithsonian’s newly established National Museum of the American Indian in Washington along with the rest of the Heye Foundation Collections.

This record was created on site at NMAI by the GRASAC members listed below. Ann McMullen and Pat Nietfeld of NMAI supported the research onsite. Cory Willmott's research was funded by a grant from the American Philosophical Society. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provided Cory with an RA, Ceara Horsley, in Fall 2008 to work on GRASAC data entry. (CH)