Blackened hide, quills dyed red, yellow, blue and black, tin cones, red dyed deer hair.

Pouch formed of two rectangular pieces sewn together around the edges, with a slit of 6.5" cut in one side to form an opening. Hide fringes are sewn into the seam at both ends. They have tin cones with red dyed hair attached. One end has 12 of these; the other end has 7, but end of thongs are visible where 5 are missing. Two of these, with two between them, are wrapped with quills. Quillwork is also binding the two long edges of the pouch and in motifs on the slip side, presumably the front. Two thread quillwork forms central motif; ottertails and hearts etc. in running stitch; outer border appears to be braided, but may be made with only two active elements and then sewn on.

The motifs are symetrical two ways - from middle of of length and width - but with variations in the positions of colors. They consist of three stripes topped with heart shapes and wavy lines and alternating with zigzags and a variety of ottertail.

CW, AM

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at Fort Miami (Detroit) and Michilimackinac, between August 1793 and August 1796, at which time the Regiment was withdrawn to Montreal.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