Red "Common stroud," silk ribbon: yellow, green, navy and red (faded navy looks purple/gray); some bleeding of blue dye into yellow; metal buttons; red wool twill tape; coarse whitish linen used as interfacing/reinforcement for buttonholes (visible only inside; sewn with linen thread).

Handsewn, including finished buttonholes for nine functional buttons/buttonholes from cuff to 9 inches up leg; line of handstitching extends above opening for buttons (meaning that ribbonwork was done on flat fabric that was then folded and sewn to create legging tubes); ribbonwork uses one, two and three layers to create different effects; one layer cut away to base fabric (red); two and three layers cut away to reveal different colored ribbons. At top, ribbons extend above sewn-down ribbon work and also have somewhat zigzag cut raw ends. Twill tape ties at top to secure to belt/waistband; on each legging these are sewn/tacked together for four-inch segment about ten inches up from legging. .

Zigzag ribbonwork pattern. Front and back designs are similar but not identical. Same colors used for both.

CW finds three layers very unusual for Great Lakes ribbonwork.

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at Fort Miami (Detroit) and Michilimackinac, between August 1793 and August 1796, at which time the Regiment was withdrawn to Montreal.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