Buffalo Robe
date: label: Accession Date
content: 27 Oct 1930
name: label: Donor Name
content: Gen. Timothy E. Wilcox
notes: label: Notes
content: Stripes embroidered with colored plant fibers on buffalo hide. Collected among the Sioux, but of Cheyenne type.
label: Notes
content: Illus. Fig. 7, p. 64 in p. 58 in Greene, Candace S., 2015, "The Use of Plant Fibers in Plains Indian Embroidery," American Indian Art Magazine, 40(2):58-71. Identified there: "Striped buffalo robe, gift to General T. E. Wilcox, an amateur naturalist, from an unidentified tribe, c. 1870. Buffalo hide, plant fibers, leather, wool. 78 1/2" wide (199.4 cm). The robe has embroidery worked entirely in plant fibers of various colors except for small sections done with thin strips of red commercial leather." The robe is further described on pp. 65-66: "... a full buffalo hide with the hair on it, is embroidered with twenty-three stripes in warm tones of gold, brown and off-white, punctuated with sections of vivid scarlet, each section of color set off from the next by a single dark stitch. Each row is further accented with ten tufts of red wool. It is in many ways a classic example of the striped robe found throughout the Plains, except for one major difference: no porcupine quills were used. Instead the embroidery was worked with plant fibers in a range of carefully arranged natural colors. ... For the bright red sections, ... [the creator] used fine strips of commercially dyed leather, carefully peeled from the surface of some item of Western manufacture and reworked as embroidery strands. ... The original accession file lists it as a"[b]uffalo robe, given to Gen. Wilcox by a tribe grateful for the recovery of one of their favorite young men under his treatment." Information on the collection was evidently conveyed verbally by Wilcox, who identified the origin of some pieces, many as Sioux, but did not identify the "grateful tribe" from whom this robe came. ... Striped robes were made by several Plains tribes, but the arrangement of colors on this one suggests that it was produced by a member of one of the quilling scoieties that existed among the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Gros Ventre. Women in these societies undertook specific projects in fulfillment of a vow, often as a prayer for the welfare of beloved relatives. "The recovery of one of their favorite young men" would, for example, be an appropriate occasion for such a vow."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 7 Jul 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Not Given, Dakota Territory, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Sioux (Oceti Sakowin) (?)
label: Culture
content: Cheyenne (Tsitsistas, Suhtai) (?)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 112196
label: USNM Number
content: E351014-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Buffalo Robe