Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

108 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
was Started. Collectors and even artists were
biased against such European trappings and deliberately
avoided them, generally seeking those
items that they supposed or predetermined to be
aboriginal. Some very late examples are in a few
collections (the Museum of the Great Plains,
Lawton, Oklahoma, has several Osage wedding
coats) and possibly several exist as unidentified
militia coats in military collections. George Catlin
was one of the few professional artists to illustrate
a man wearing a chiefs coat, and he also collected
an Indian copy of one.
Surprisingly, a few chiefs coats, or at least
pieces of them, have been recovered archeologically
(Ewers, 1974:277). Oxidized or corroded
salts from the decorative brass metal lace has in
some instances preserved strips of cloth to which
the lace was sewn. The writer has seen a virtually
intact coat recovered by an amateur archeologist
from an Iroquois burial. Major portions of one
were found in Michigan (Brown, 1971:128-133)
and still other significant discoveries of the remnants
of these coats have been made in the riverine
tribe villages of the Missouri. One recovered
near Mobridge, South Dakota, appears to have
been an indigo blue coat with red facings decorated
with gilt buttons and matching lace (Wedel,
1955:146-147).
So widespread was their use that virtually every
traveller in the pre-Civil War era mentioned
chiefs coats. South of the Platte in 1839, a St.
Louis doctor, F.A. Wislizenus, encountered sixty
Sioux warriors. "One of them wore a red English
uniform, on which he prided himself not a little"
(Wislizenus, 1969:56). Mountain man William
Ferris met several hundred Teton Dakotas on the
Platte in 1830. "They formed a semicircle in front
of our position, and displayed four American
flags. Many of them had on long scarlet coats,
trimmed with gold and silver lace. . " (Ferris,
1940:27). Prince Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Wurttemberg,
said that the Otoe chief Shonkape "wore
a red uniform and a three-cornered hat with
feathers, looking very odd on an otherwise bare
body." He also mentioned that at least two Iowa
women were dressed in European coats (Paul
Wilhelm, 1973:384,321).
The organized fur trade declined gradually
through the 1850s and many specialty goods for
Indians, such as chiefs coats, were phased out.
The Indian Wars forced the warriors to spend
their "furry banknotes" instead for better arms
and more ammunition. Changes in fashion
among Whites, and such phenomena as the Teton
Dakotas' shift in preference from red and white
cloth to blue and black, may have accelerated the
chiefs coat's demise. Furthermore, nearly every
post-Civil War treaty with the Plains Indians, as
well as many of the earlier ones, obligated the
federal govenment to furnish clothing as annuity
payments. A typical treaty stipulation stated that
the government would furnish "each male person
over fourteen years of age, with a suit of good
substantial clothing, consisting of coat, pantaloons,
flannel shirt, hat, and a pair of home-made
socks" (Kappler, 1904:755ff, cited in Ewers,
1976:103). Civil War surplus generally filled the
bill. One single order for the Teton Dakota in
1869 called for six thousand complete outfits,
including shirts and hats. The outer garments
were dyed black, possibly to prevent their theft
and resale as regular surplus (National Archives,
1869). The hats were probably the black, straightbrimmed
"pilgrim" hat (cafled the "Hardee" by
the Army), which, along with braids, vest and
moccasins, became the stereotypic dress of the
early reservation Indian.
In a few places, clothing made by Whites for
Indian use survives to this day. The Osages still
purchase their handsome wedding coats from a
band uniform manufacturer, and the Canadian
government gives blue wool coats trimmed in
scarlet to certain tribal leaders under its treaty
obligations.
Some tribes have incorporated elements of
early White costume into clothing of their own
manufacture. The knitted and crocheted stockings
made by Navajos and Pueblos are holdovers
from Spanish colonial costume, and at least one
tribe in Mexico, the Chamula of Chiapas, wears
a modified eighteenth-century military coat as
part of its festival garb.