Sioux Indian women dressing hides. — The Indians of the Great Plains were excellent skin dressers. Two classes of operations were employed; one pertained to the dressing of robes and the other to the tawing of hides. In the first operation the hair was not removed, but in the case of the larger animals the inner part of the skin was split off, so as to render the hides soft and pliable. By the other operation the skin, after being sweated, was depilated by means of scrapers of bone. The Sioux Indian woman here shown is engaged in thinning a hide with an iron-tipped scraping tool after the preliminary process of unhairing has been completed.