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Twined bag/Medicine Bundle Container
Twined bag/Medicine Bundle Container
Twined bag/Medicine Bundle Container
This twined bag, or as also referred to as a medicine bundle container, is made up from twined nettlestalk fiber, wool, yarn, and potentially buffalo hair. This finger woven ancestor used to contain medicine bundles, and comes with a buckskin tie. One side is thematic of the sky-world displaying a thunderbird, or animikiig, with two smaller thunderbirds attached to its wing-tips, alongside bands of black fretted lines. The opposite side has a theme of the underworld and is represented by beings that reside under earth and water, namely an underwater panther, a mishibizhiig, with a long tail and parallel zig-zag black lines. This ancestor represents the Anishinaabe approach of space, and how the cosmos is represented on the two sides of the bag (Phillips, 2013). This ancestor is currently located within the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Mesquakie
Item name specified by Kelly and in “Before and After the Horizons by Ruth Phillips
Read More About This Relative
Twined nettlestalk fiber, wool, yarn, buffalo hair?, buckskin tie.
The rectangular bag with suede end tie has a tan background and vertical red and black stripes framing the design field.
Recto: off-center toward bottom right is an underwater panther/deer creature with antlers and a very long tail, surrounded by groups of parallel, but not continuous, black zigzag and angular lines. Verso: centered below 2 1/2 bands of black fretted lines is a black thunderbird with two small thunderbirds attached to its wing-tips.
Overall: 7 × 10 1/2 inches (17.8 × 26.7 cm) Overall (leather end ties): 13 3/4 inches (34.9 cm)
As mentioned by Ruth Phillips “Before the Horizons”.
Provenance
Purchased by Milford G. Chandler [1889-1981] at Tama, Iowa, USA
Richard A. Pohrt [1911-2005] (Flint, Michigan, USA) (Richard A. Pohrt was the dealer of this purchase).
1981-present, purchased 1981 by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
DIA item record
This ancestor has been featured in “Before and after the Horizon”: Ruth Phillips. The Art of the Great Lakes Indians. Exh. cat., Flint Institute of Arts. Flint, MI, 1973, no. 388. Phillips, R.B. "Dreams and Designs: Iconographic Problems in Great Lakes Twined Bags." Bulletin of the DIA 62, no. 1 (1986): 26-37, figs. 7-8. Penney, David W. Art of the American Indian Frontier: The Chandler-Pohrt Collection. Seattle and London: The Detroit Institute of Arts and University of Washington Press, 1992, cat. no. 20.
About This GRASAC Record
Unknown. "Twined Bag/Medicine Bundle Container" GRASAC ID 24849. Located in the Detroit Institute of Arts, catalogue number 81.390.
This record was augmented by Natasha Fares in December 2023.
Good images are not yet available for this item, as it was on exhibit at the time of the GRASAC visit and not on the list of objects to discuss. By request, Kelly Konieczki created a GKS profile after the visit. A DIA Museum Catalogue System (TMS) photograph was added as a temporary place-holder image. KK also added all available information about the item from TMS after the visit, however did not research its supplementary files.