Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes

ALGONQUIANS 13
Clothing
Algonquians made use of buckskin more than any other
material for clothing, especially the hide of the whitetailed
deer. Moose, elk, and caribou, also of the deer family, provided
some tribes with materials for their garments. The
hides were cured to make soft leather. Men wore shirts,
breechcloths, leggings, and moccasins. Women wore either
skirts and blouses or dresses, plus moccasins. Algonquian
clothing often had short fringes hanging from the seams
and edges. Both men and women wore fur robes for extra
warmth in the winter. They also wore belts and sashes of
cured leather or woven plant material.
Both men and women decorated their clothing with
quillwork. The quills of the porcupine would be soaked
and softened in water and then dyed with vegetable coloring.
Paint, feathers, shells, and moosehair embroidery were
also used to add color and designs to clothing. After Europeans
came, the Algonquians began using glass beads in
addition to quills and shells. Beadwork also replaced stone
and shell in the making of some jewelry.
Women often wore their hair in braids and decorated
it with a small cap or a band of shells. Men usually went
bareheaded in order to show off their hair. They wore
their hair in a variety of styles, depending on individual
taste. Hair for Algonquians, as for other Native Americans,
was a symbol of selfhood and strength.
Other Arts and Crafts
The discussions of food, shelter, transportation, and
clothing have shown the wide range of Algonquian technology.
The Algonquians, like other Native Americans,
ingeniously used the materials at hand to shape tools,
weapons, and ceremonial objects. They used wood and
bark, other plant materials, stone, clay, hide, bone,
antler, shells, quills, and feathers for their artifacts. And
some Great Lakes Algonquians used copper to make
metal objects. After the arrival of Europeans, the Indians
adapted their crafts to new materials, using metals, glass
beads, and strips of cloth in original ways.
The Algonquian use of a variety of materials to make
containers shows the extent of their ingenuity. Some
Algonquians favored birch bark. Some of these birchbark
containers, like the mocuck, were watertight, their
seams smeared with pitch, and were used for carrying
and storing water. Others were used as bowls, dishes, and
trays, or for winnowing (separating chaff from grain)
wild rice.
Algonquians also carved containers out of wood. The
burls or knots of birch, elm, and maple, or some other
hardwood, were charred in a fire to soften for scraping
Algonquian birch-bark mocuck (modern)
with stone or bone tools. Wood was also used to make
the mortars and pestles needed for grinding corn.
Wood splints and sweet grass were utilized in basketry,
the wood splints to make plaited baskets and the
sweet grass to make coiled baskets.
Pottery was also used to make containers for cooking,
carrying, and storing. Although Algonquians in the
Northeast did not develop techniques in ceramics to the
extent that Indians of the Southeast and Southwest did,
some tribes crafted pottery containers for cooking, carrying,
and storing. Algonquians had one main practical
design: elongated clay pots for cooking with rounded or
pointed bottoms and a neck at the top. They shaped the
clay into pots without a potter’s wheel, then smoothed
the outside with a cord-wrapped paddle before firing.
The pots were unpainted but had geometric designs
from tapping, pressing, or scratching objects into the
clay either before or after firing.
Algonquians applied this same sort of ingenuity to the
making of weapons for hunting and warfare. They used
wood, stone, bone, and, after non-Indians began to trade
with them, metal, to make spears, clubs, and bows and
arrows. Some among them also used wood for armor and
shields.
Both the eastern Algonquians and neighboring Iroquois
used wampum for ceremonial purposes. They made
Algonquian wampum