4/16/2021 – Native American Art

sinew-sewn, softly tanned deer hide; with fine beadwork in colors of red white-heart, light and dark blue, pea green, greasy yellow, and white; throat of bag with imagery of a buck on one side and a grazing doe on opposite; main beaded panel depicts warriors on horseback; quill-wrapped slats
overall length 34 in. x width 6 in.
fourth quarter 19th century

This bag is very likely by the same hand as one held in the collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND 11727).  Another similar tobacco bag in both the pictographic elements and the design of the quilled slats, is in the Denver Museum of Natural History (cat. no. 6563).  This bag is also published in American Indian Art Magazine, “Pictographic Art in Beadwork from the Cheyenne River Sioux” by Dennis Lessard (Winter 1990: p. 63, fig. 12).