Bandolier Bag

Label

Indigenous women of the Great Lakes region created wide-strapped shoulder bags, inspired by Euro-American bandolier bags used for carrying soldiers’ ammunition, by incorporating colorful glass beads and ribbons from Europe to create stunning accessories. Like others of its kind, this example features a plant on the central panel from which flowers and berries grow, repeating along the bandolier (strap).

Like the bandolier bag above, the moccasins below are not utilitarian, but they would have been worn for special events and occasions. While demonstrating the mastery of technique by the women who made them, both the bag and moccasin designs reference the natural environments upon which Anishinaabe depend.

From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art

Course History

ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022

GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022

ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022

SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022

Writing 2.06, The American Mosaic: Literature, Essays, and Memoirs from the Voices of the Subaltern, Doug Moody, Fall 2023

Exhibition History

Native American Designs of the Northern Woodlands, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 20, 1995-February 9, 1997.

This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 3 –July 22, 2022.

Provenance

Collected by Elizabeth Conway Clark, Fort Riley, Kansas, before 1907; to her daughter Mrs. John [Eleanor Clark] French; given to present collection, 1989.

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Subjects