Pad Saddle
date: label: Accession Date
content: 21 Oct 1881
name: label: Collector
content: George Catlin
label: Donor Name
content: Mrs. Joseph Harrison Jr.
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Good specimen man's saddle; overall length of pad 21 1/2" center width (spread out) 8 1/2"; decorative band of red strouding across center 9 1/2" wide; corners of pad decorated with quilled rosette with quilled feather forms extended to corners in red, blue-green, yellow and natural colored quills; quill wrapped skin fringe hangs from sides of pad in four sections; girth is piece of red strouding over canvas sewn to skin tab pf pad on left side; tab with hole, strengthened by rawhide circle, employed for fastening girth at right; small loop tabs, foreward of girth ones on each side for stirrup straps. "This may be the oldest Plains Indian pad saddle in existence. it is of a generalized Upper Missouri type which varied little if at all from tribe to tribe. Hence tribal identification cannot be checked with assurance. (Compare Stansbury pad saddle from Blackfoot, Cat. No. 2656, and drawings in R. F. Kurz Journal. Bulletin 115, Plates 9, 10, 14, 19, 22.) - John C. Ewers Jan. 10, 1948. The entry "Trocadero July '85" in Accession Book is obviously in error." [but see below.]
label: Notes
content: Identified as possibly of Cree or Metis manufacture by Morgan Baillargeon, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2009.
label: Notes
content: There is some question about the number of this saddle (unless there were actually 2 saddles?) See Cat. 28 and 29 p. 169 and Cat. 30 p. 170, and Pl. VIa p. 118 in Faucourt, Camille. 2020. A La Conquête de l'Ouest : Collectes Amérindiennes de La Smithsonian Institution Conservées Au Musée Du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. Entry is for a pad saddle, pair of stirrups, and skin bands, Musee du Quai Branly catalog no. 71.1885.78.257.1-6, which their records identify as former Smithsonian no. 76345.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 19 Nov 2024
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Plains (not certain), United States (not certain) / Canada (not certain), North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Plains Indian (?)
label: Culture
content: Cree (?)
label: Culture
content: Metis (?)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 010638
label: USNM Number
content: E76345-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Saddle