possibly commercially(?) tanned hide; pink glazed cotton; red cotton; red fabric ribbon; moosehair, natural and dyed blue, purple; thread; light brown string

Pair of moccasins made of possibly commercially tanned hide, with tightly puckered toe vamps that are decorated with moosehair embroidery. The vamps are long and narrow, and extend to form a tongue. The separate cuffs are bound with red cotton and are laced together with a brown string. A red fabric ribbon is tied across the front of the ankle of one moccasin. Moccasins are lined with pink glazed cotton.

Floral motifs with U-shaped embroidered curve of a white line and zig-zags on the vamp. Floral motifs and a white zig-zag line along the side and bottom of the cuffs.

"[This pair of moccasins] in the ten Kate collection are examples of the mass production of moccasins developed four the tourist market by Wendat entrepreneurs toward the end of the nineteenth century. By this period the loss of hunting lands and native-tanned hides had caused the Wendat and Hodenosaunee to use commercially processed hide, although they turned the untanned surface to the outside in order to more closely imitate the appearance of native-tanned hide [...] The moosehair embroidered floral designs on the vamps and cuffs of ten Kate's moccasins are much simplified from those at Lorette fifty years earlier. [...] This tourist-style Indian footwear was sold for practical purposes, to be used as slippers, and also as a collectable souvenir." (Pieter Hovens, with contributions by Duane Anderson, Ted Brasser, Laura van Broekhoven et al. "The Ten Kate Collection 1882-1888". Leiden: ZKF Publishers, 2010, pp 25)

Museum documentation

Collected by Herman ten Kate, purchased from him by the museum in 1921

Pieter Hovens, with contributions by Duane Anderson, Ted Brasser, Laura van Broekhoven et al. "The Ten Kate Collection 1882-1888". Leiden: ZKF Publishers, 2010.