Home tanned hide (deer or elk). Pockets made of coarse light brown canvas, 6 brass buttons with anchor motifs (one missing), machine stitched with commercial thread.

Fringes on the sleeves inserted into the seams and then cut on the diagonal to give them a downward flow. Also sewn into the seem on the welt pockets and armhole where they also have the diagonal cut. On the bottom the fringe is attached to the top edge. Cuffs are separate pieces of hide, sewn un with a curved seem in Western style

Yoke in two pieces extends across back with fringe inserted into bottom seam. Seams are overlapped and sewn with two parallel rows of stitching (like a French seam). The collar is sewn double, like a shirt collar. Back is in two pieces with centre back seam

TN - Very similar to a jacket in the Evelyn Johnson collection from Six Nations. A photo shows EJ wearing it as an elderly woman in the 1930s.

CW - This could be a woman's jacket as there are darts at the bust and slight inward curve at waist. It is not commercially made or mass produced - 'home made'. One clue is the diagonally cut fringes, seen on much older garments but not on commercial garments

Additional measurements: sleeve length - 66, sleeve circumference - 53, collar height - 4

Similarity to jacket in the Evelyn Johnson collection (ROM) datable to first few decades of the 20th century.

F. Barlow Cumberland, Catalogue and Notes of the Oronhyatekha Historical Collection (Toronto: Independent Order of Foresters, 1904), p 24, Item 79. “Buckskin Coat of 'Coureur de bois'. Buckskin coats, deeply fringed, such as this, are mentioned by Fenimore Cooper as having been used by Leather Stocking and the woodsmen of his period."

Unknown artist, buckskin coat. Currently in the Royal Ontario Museum, 911.3.212. Item photographed and described as part of a GRASAC research trip December 2008; GRASAC item id 532.