Cotton chintz (multicolored printed coarse cotton--unbleached cotton with dark brown ground and floral design fields separated by stripes. Printed colors include pink, green, mustard yellow, lighter brown, maroon, light blue ), medium-sized (about 3/4 inch) silver ring brooches. Smaller (.5 inch) brooches on one cuff .

Handsewn; pieces include front, back, underarm gussets, sleeves, collar, cuffs, cuff ruffle, neck ruffle. Also has narrow shoulder reinforcements sewn on top of shoulder seams. On one side (left) narrow pieces are added to widen the garment because the fabric/piece goods are only 24 inches wide. Material may have been made in either India or England but shipped/marketed through England. On front, ring brooches applied: 9 columns of brooches and 16 rows; one row at shoulder seam; on back 15 rows, also in 9 columns. One row of smaller brooches on right cuff flounce. Sewn with thick blue multi-ply thread. Shirts like this often included in fur trade inventories; very possibly made by non-Indians for trade. Ring brooches

AMcM says layout of brooches reminds her of later Great Lakes men''s shirts with ribbonwork or beaded yoke-like panels on chest and across shoulders.

CW examination; NMAI record: "Gingham Blouse."

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posted at Fort Miami (Detroit) and Michilimackinac, between August 1793 and August 1796, at which time the Regiment was withdrawn to Montreal.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)