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moccasin, center seam
moccasin, center seam
moccasin, center seam
Centre-seam moccasin with puckered toe, decorated with beads and silk tape. Haudenosaunee, made between 1700 and 1800. Purchased by the British Museum from the Yorkshire Philosophical Society Museum in 1921.
Anishinaabeg or Hodenosaunee: The British Museum's record states the moccasin is Algonquian or Iroquoian.
Read More About This Relative
Lightly smoked or unsmoked tanned deer skin, edged with a pinkish cotton or silk tape, also found on the vamp and used as ties. Decorated with large white and black pony beads and tubular black glass wampum beads. Vegetable fibre string used for the beading.
Single piece moccasin, with a centre seam and puckered toe, curved ankle flaps and seams up the instep and heel. The ties are held through holes pierced on either side of the instep seam. Black wampum beads edge the tape decorating the moccasin's cuff. Tape and beads are also found along the heel's seam. There are four leather thongs sewn into the centre seam which are edged with white pony beads.
The vamp is decorated with a zig-zag of beads down the instep seam, in black and white, with purple wampum running down the edge of the tape. At the toe, in between the puckering are two rows of white beads following the toe outline. On both sides of the instep seam are pairs of triangles outlined in white beads with black beads in the middle.
RP said this moccasin has "a very active pattern" and is "about energy and power." The large size of beads suggests an earlier date of manufacture.
British Museum object catalogue entry
Provenance
The British Museum purchased this moccasin from the Yorkshire Philosophical Society in 1921.
J.C.H King 'Thunderbird and Lightning' (BMP, 1982): p.66-7.
About This GRASAC Record
Unknown artist, moccasin, center seam. Currently in the British Museum, Am1921,1014.95. Item photographed and described as part of a GRASAC research trip December 2007; GRASAC item id 25308.
This record was created as part of a Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRASAC) research trip to the Pitt Rivers Museum and British Museum, December 8-22 2007, funded by a grant from the International Opportunities fund of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Researchers present: Heidi Bohaker (HB), John Borrows (JB), Lindsay Borrows (LB), Alan Corbiere (AC), Henrietta Lidchi (HL), Stacey Loyer (SL), Janis Monture (JM), Bruce Morito (BM), Ruth Phillips (RP), Anne De Stecher (AS), Cory Willmott (CW).