According to the book, Identity
by Design, the decoration and design involved in Native American women’s
clothing wasn’t just about looking pretty, there was symbolism in every choice
they made in the creation of their dresses, as well as the clothing they made
for their families. According to Rebecca Lyon, an Athabaskan/Alutiiq artist
“Nothing is as personal as the clothes we wear. Clothing can be seen as the
vessel that holds the human spirit.”
Unfortunately for my
research the above-mentioned book doesn’t go into Cherokee women’s clothing,
but some of the useful over all information on clothing construction and design
for the tribes I was hoping were close enough to the techniques used by my
people so it would still useful information for my needs. One challenge I have
come across even this text is the lack of artwork for clothing pre-1600s. Most
of the drawings/paintings are group shots showing minimal detail in which
people had very little to no clothing on. Unfortunately I cannot go around
topless to SCA events, and most of the pictures of my own tribe in that time
period looks as though the explorers visited these places during the warmer
months, so very little example of the winter clothing worn. That said, some of
the later period images are of clothing made the same way that people made it
for generations, so as long as I am careful to avoid obvious changes made by later
period exposure to non-natives, it should still be viable for my research.
As far as not having any Cherokee input when writing this
book, I don’t know if that’s due to not having access to Cherokee artists for
the project, or simply than not searching out slowly and art specialists from
my tribe. The other tribes I know my people had contact with were the
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and the Natchez, basically all tribes
covering the southwest in precolonial America. Unfortunately, none of these
tribes represented in this otherwise very interesting book. My goal was to look
at the style of clothing and its construction, and see what similarities I
could find, and that I could use.
There are several different types of dresses mentioned. The
first is the side fold dress fit to
be popular in the upper Missouri River Legion and the Western Great Lakes
region of the northeastern plains. I know at one point my tribe stretched up
that far so I wondered if they might have used this style of dress at all.
After studying the diagrams in the book
and looking into my other clothing research images, I see no examples of the
side fold dress among the Cherokee.
The next style
discussed was the two hide dress which seemed more popular among the tribes of
the Plateau region from British Columbia into northwestern Montana. They
mention Shoshone and Nez Pierce, as well as some Ute and Blackfoot use this
style of dress. It wasn’t until after the Trail of Tears that the Cherokee and
the Shoshone were close enough for regular contact. There is also a mention of
the three hide dress which were used by both northern and southern tribes of
the plains. This last one seems to have a bit of potential since it’s the most
likely to have been viewed or the knowledge traded within the area my tribe is
from. It involves two hides that create a skirt, and a third hide that makes a
poncho or yoke top. The difference between the southern and northern versions
is the North used more beadwork (I assume this made the dress warmer), in the
South the top was more of a Cape the poncho. I assume by cape the mean it’s
longer the back than the front because there still seems to be a front section.
As much as I like
this book I feel I need to try to find some comparisons to the techniques used
within my own tribe for dressmaking to see how similar they are in style to the
two hide or three hide dress variations. A lot of the mentioned Cherokee
clothing I can find in other resources are the more modern cloth tear dress
that is so popular among the Cherokee nowadays. That said I think I still found
some useful information. I checked the white done skin dress made for me over
15 years ago that I thought I could possibly use for court wear and through
what I learned in this book was able to identify it as a three hide dress. I’ll
have to check the seams to see what shape they’re in, but it’s all handsewn
using sinew, and I’ve already got some ideas on decoration that will not only
be beautiful but will fit my personality and my inner spirit. Assuming it still
fits me after this many years...
Update: in the picture above is the dress with me in
it. It seems as though fit though I imagine it will fit better with a better
bra under it, and with some adjustment to the neck seems to ride a bit higher
than I remember it riding. Most of the pictures in the book are not of somebody
wearing the dresses, but the dresses on display, so hard to tell how the neck actually hangs on a person. All have to wait to get a better bra so everything
is sitting properly before I make any adjustments to the neck if necessary.
