Pair Trousers Used In Dances
date: label: Accession Date
content: 1880
name: label: Donor Name
content: Edward W. Nelson
notes: label: Notes
content: FROM CARD: "MADE OF SIBERIAN REINDEER, TRIMMED WITH WOLVERINO [sic, should be wolverine]. INVENTORIED 1975."
label: Notes
content: This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact https://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=98 , retrieved 12-17-2021; see web page for additional information: Dance pants, Inupiaq. Both women and men wore short dance pants that came just below the knee, for performing at ceremonies and festivals. This pair is made of mottled reindeer fur and ornamented with decorative hair stitches, strips of clipped white reindeer fur, wolverine trimming, and loops of red yarn. There is a drawstring around the top to tighten them on the hips. Men and women in the Bering Strait region dressed in several traditional styles of pants, which women sewed from the skins of caribou, reindeer skin, polar bear, seal, and dogs. Breeches-pants that reached just below the knees and fit snugly at the bottom-were usually for men. Ankle-length trousers, often with built-in boots, were usually worn by women. Short breeches-reaching to the thigh-were worn by both sexes at ceremonies and festivals and were decorated with decorative materials and needlework. E. W. Nelson collected this pair at Unalakleet in 1880 (see below). John Murdoch-who traveled in northwest Alaska in the 1880s-reported that trouser styles worn at Point Barrow were similar to those worn in Norton Sound. Murdoch reported that men in the Barrow area wore knee breeches, hair-side out, that reached the top of the boot. Underneath these trousers, they usually put on a pair of caribou-skin stockings. Men occasionally used booted long pants (pantaloons) instead of breeches and boots. This was more commonly a female style, worn over an inner pair made of soft caribou skin. In the spring and summer, women wore just the inner pants, with knee-high waterproof boots. Children also wore pantaloon-style trousers. Short ornamented pants like the ones shown here were for dancing. In the winter of 1867, W. H. Dall attended a dance in Unalakleet where he saw men wearing "breeches of tame reindeer skin and had each a tail of wolf or wolverine attached to the belt behind." Women's "breeches were of the white Siberian reindeer, embroidered, decorated with strips of wolfskin, and made to fit the limbs perfectly." In a story relating the origin of the Wolf-Eagle Messenger Feast for people from Kauwerak (Seward Peninsula), William Oquilluk described pants worn by male spirit dancers as made "of summer caribou skin with two stripes of winter-bleached caribou skin running from their hips to inside their legs above the knees. The white strips had edges of lingcod skin with long shoulder hairs of caribou sewn like a fringe." Nelson described the pair Unalakleet dance breeches pictured here as follows: "They measure about 15 inches in length and extend from the hip to the upper thigh, and are made of tame reindeer skin mottled white and brown. They have an ornamental strip extending from the lower border on each side and curving upward around the back of the garment, reaching within about 2 1/2 inches of the upper border in the rear. Extending part way down the front of the leg, on each side, is an ornamental band of white deerskin [caribou] having a seam along the border on one side with a row of small spaced bunches of red worsted. The ornamental band, which extends from the lower edge of the trousers around to the rear, and the short bands in front, are bordered by a strip of wolverine fur. About the waist is a band containing a drawstring for binding the garment around the hips."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 31 Jan 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Unalakleet, Norton Sound, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Inupiaq
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 80A00050
label: USNM Number
content: E43799-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Dance Trousers
physicalDescription: label: Width - Object
content: 71 cm