Glass beads, cotton fabric and twine, wool yarn, brass hook-eyes

The garter, of loom-woven beadwork, has long thick fringes with supplementary red, green and blue wool yarn strung at intervals with white beads.

The complex geometric design of pink and green on a white background is repeated with subtle variations four times. The design is a pink and black checkerboard butterfly shape at its crossing, four pink squares outlined in black at the corners, green or pink triangles at midpoint between the squares, and, at left and right, vertical bands composed of interlocked alternating diamonds and X's for a positive/negative effect.

The extremely fine beading style is similar to other early pieces such as 81.283, with the delicacy of its geometric designs, combination of beads, and diamond/hourglass motif. The diamond-and-hourglass motif can be seen as a highly abrstracted represntation of the cosmos, with the hourglass being the thunderbird, and the diamonds being the underwater panthers, with crosses between (DP). These colours don't generally appear until the 1870s (CW), though the design, and the combination of many colours of bead would date it nearer to 1845 (DP).

Dimensions of woven area for 81.76.2: 13.125 x 2.25 in. and overall dimensions with fringes: 31.5 x 2.25 in. Dimensions of woven area for 81.76.1: 13.25 x 2.375 in.

Handwritten note from Pohrt, September 1982 in DIA storage room: "I purchased these from James May of Petoskey, Michigan. James, with his wife, purchased a small museum and gift shop west of St. Ignace about four or five miles called Totem Village. Prior to the Mays' purchase of this shop and museum, it belonged to some, I believe, mixed blood Indian. While most of the materials in their exhibits were of questionable value, they did have several pieces of early (in Michigan) work that apparently (and in my opinion) was collected in that area, including these garters. May and his wife split the blanket somewhere prior to the time I purchased the material, and they also split the material in the museum: he took part of it, she retained some. Eventually we managed to buy this pair of garters, a shoulder bag which is also here, and a pipe bowl which is inlaid wit lead (we did not get the pipe stem). I think this is fairly early material from that particular area of Michigan."