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Post by joanne2 on Jun 16, 2008 19:53:09 GMT -5
Love that little Huron pouch. It's beautiful.
Keep up the embroidery PA, lookin' good.
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Post by beaudro on Jun 16, 2008 20:10:00 GMT -5
I have seen much of the false embroidery on the tumplines, on what i think was basswood fiber. I couldn't go as far to guess who did it first, the nuns or the natives, but i have often wondered why they would go to so much trouble to embellish. After all the work of taking fibers at the right time of year, then making twine, then weaving into an 18 foot tumpline with embroidery. At this point i have finger weaved a few decent looking sashes in assumption styles, but you can find a few mistakes in any of them. On the original sashes or tumplines you may not find any mistakes at all. Amazing what they did with so little, and under harsh enviroments.
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Post by paskinner on Jun 19, 2008 8:18:23 GMT -5
I thought people might find this interesting in regards to the size of the industry: The Hurons in Lorette, Quebec-in 1898 produced 140,000 pairs of hair embroidered moccasins. The dressing of hides is also mentioned as being a big part of their economy-imported hides. It's unclear to me if these hides came from North America or? Also makes me wonder what form of braintan they were producing-soap tan maybe? It would be interesting to find more info on this-we often claim that braintan was never industrialized, but I think never mechanized would be more accurate. Also, since these moccosins were sold to the Yukon Gold fields and to fur traders, etc. I sometimes wonder why some are so concerned with wearing clothing from a certain area at re ecnatments-seems like someone portraying a trader could get away with wearing stuff from any number of scattered tribes.
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Post by beaudro on Jun 19, 2008 9:36:47 GMT -5
Not all leather worn by the trappers was braintan, although it would have been the most common after one stayed in the west very long. You can find in the journals where most of them started out well equipped with "leathern breeches" bought in st louis. I've been told by other researchers that this leather was similiar to the german tan we can find today. Some records show of a tanner making garment grade leather in st louis. This means that not all trappers wore traditional native style brain tan. It is very well known that trappers tanned with brains and took hides to many of the trading post and forts to be made into clothing. About 75% of the trappers were french and half breed indians, including metis. Antoine Clement was a Metis. One of his many mountain skills would have been brain tanning anyway. By 1898 many of the supplies to Indian reservations came from Canada, which maybe why Quebec spit out so much supplies. I would believe that most of those hides came from north america, as selling furs still had a demand. bad thing is, chrome tanning was invented in 1858, by 1898 it was widely used. especially in major operations. The term dressing was still used in chromium sulfates, so it's possible when they said "dressing" they were referring to chrome tan.
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Post by paskinner on Jun 19, 2008 12:29:45 GMT -5
Don't know if everything in the book can be taken as fact but: "The moccasins were cut out in workshops at the hide dressing plants, and embroidered and assembled by women in their homes on a piece-work basis. And ....many French Canadians from the neighboring villiage of St. Ambroise were employed in the work." Else where it's mentioned that a lot of the embroidery was done by the nuns themselves and still sold as indian curious to Europe. Kind of funny to think of people buying something "native made" (The europeans had a very romanicized veiw of indians according to the other book I mentioned "Trading Identities) that was in fact done by nuns or the French. Anyway, thanks for the input. It's pretty hard to tell by looking at pictures of the mocs on the net if all of it was braintan, but I haven't seen any that look like grain on commercial stuff anyway. Chrome tan would probably be a bugger to put a needle through compared to the real thing. Anyway, don't know if anyone else finds this interesting. Here's a great pic of Huron embroidery on moccosins: www.civilization.ca/tresors/treasure/images/250_1b.gifand I need to get back to stretching hide.
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