Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Laced Coats and Leather Jackets:
The Great Plains Intercuhural Clothing Exchange
ABSTRACT
Focusing on events in the Northern Plains, this
paper discusses the exchange of costume that
occurred on the American frontier between Indians
and the Whites with whom they came in
contact.
A person is often judged by his dress. In our
society, an astute observer might be able to ascertain
from an individual's dress, his economic
status, social and political attitudes, religion,
profession, regional background, and a host of
other details. Among nineteenth-century Plains
Indians, tribal affiliation was recognizable by
headgear, clothing decorations, and even the
track of a moccasin. Within a tribe, there existed
special ways of attiring one's self Noted war
leaders had special shirts or headdresses; holy
men wrapped themselves in bizarre and mystical
robes; foppish dandies wore intricately decorated
outfits; wise councillors were clad in suits bestowed
upon them by the White government;
and wealthy status-seekers purchased dazzling
and stylish cloth coats from the fur companies.
It seems that most people are attracted to
foreign styles of dress. Both White and Indian
found the other's clothing appealing; each
adopted and adapted parts of the other's clothing
for his own special use and with his own special
meaning. This reciprocal interest apparently
James A. Hanson, Route 2, Box 18, Chadron, Nebraska 69337.
James A. Hanson
105
commenced with the beginning of contact.
Among the first-known trade items supplied to
American natives were textiles and finished shirts,
hats, military jackets, and capes known as
"matchcoats." In 1602, five years before the
founding of Jamestown, two English explorers
met a party of Indians along the coast of Maine.
The native leader was wearing a "waist coat and
breeches of black serdge, made after our seafashion,
hose and shoes on his feet" (Ewers,
1976:102-103).
The clothing trade was transcontinental in
scope. In 1787 on the Northwest Coast, the Tsimshian
Chief Seax tried to exchange his clothing
for that of the first White man to arrive in his
waters. Captain James Colnett. Colnett presented
the chief with pants, shirt, and a coat (Ewers,
1976:103). Even in the remote interior of Russian
Alaska, an American explorer (Whymper, 1868:
222) observed:
The leading men of the tribes assembled wore mock
uniforms, presented them by the Hudson's Bay Company;
old "Red Leggings" in particular, one of the Kotch-akutchin
chiefs, was gorgeous in one with immense gilt-epaulets,
brass buttons, and trimmings, and had as many coloured
ribbons hanging from his cap as would stock ten recruiting
sergeants for life.
This custom of "dressing the chiefs" apparently
started early in Indian-White contact and was
actively pursued by every government and trading
company that desired success through diplomacy.
The colonial superpowers in America
(English, French, and Spanish) recognized Indian
leaders and friends and presented them with