(piano music)
- [Dr. Zucker] We're in the
National Museum of the American Indian
looking at this magnificent Anishinaabe outfit.
- [Dr. Penney] It was collected by a lieutenant
in the British Army, a guy named Andrew Foster,
who was stationed in the Great Lakes area
between Detroit and Michilimackinac,
the head quarters of the British occupation
of the Great Lakes.
So in this important strategic zone
where the British could control trade routes.
- [Dr. Zucker] First the French came in,
looking for furs in this area
and were eventually displaced by the British.
This was a very lucrative trade.
Now this is a complicated moment.
This is about 1790,
so the United States has already declared
its independence from Britain
and there are tensions between the young republic
on the East Coast and Britain,
which controls what we know call Canada
and this area around the Great Lakes.
- [Dr. Penney] So the United States has been trying to claim
its possessions and determine what the border's going to be
in the Great Lakes and the British of course
trying to protect their trade interests are resisting.
Their allies are their native trade partners
like the Anishinaabe also known as the Ojibwa,
Chippewa, Odawa, Ottawa, all under the umbrella
of the term Anishinaabe which is the word
that in Anishinaabuem language means
"the people", means "ourselves".
After the revolution, many loyalists had escaped to Canada
the border in between the United States and Canada
was very unclear and contested in the 1790s
so the British needed their allies,
they stepped up their diplomatic efforts,
they increased the amount of trade and all in response
to the threat of the Americans coming from the south.
- [Dr. Zucker] We use the term collected to refer
to Andrew Foster taking ownership of this outfit
but likely it was made for him specifically
and it was made as part of ritual trade.
- [Dr. Penney] Part of the relationships between
the British and their Native allies would include
opportunities for mutual gift giving
and many of the gifts were clothing
so the leaders among the Anishinaabe would receive
military coats and other elements of uniforms,
several British officers received complete outfits
like this one and very likely in the ritual
they are dressed from head to toe.
It really was about mutual respect.
- [Dr. Zucker] When we look at the outfit closely,
we see this is part of an international trade network.
- [Dr. Penney] The cotton shirt was in fact manufactured
in Britain but the cotton the shirt was made from
was grown and exported from the subcontinent of India
brought to Britain the milled in their factories,
with an eye to its export to North America,
so the length of the shirt, the use of
that floral patterning, all was intended to appeal
to their native trade partners.
- [Dr. Zucker] So this is being manufactured
specifically to the styles that the
Native Americans would be receptive to.
- [Dr. Penney] Exactly, so if we look at the necklace
with the two panels with thunderbirds,
we can see that they are made out of glass beads,
the glass beads were produced in Venice
and exported but the white and dark blue color
were an attempt to replicate the color and the texture
of shell beads, known technically as wampum
so we often refer to that as imitation wampum
but they're beads created to resemble a bead
that's made out of shell in North America.
- [Dr. Zucker] Although the shirt was likely manufactured
in Britain, it's been ornamented, it's covered with
little silver ringlets which were
also meant specifically for trade.
- [Dr. Penney] We call them broaches
and they're created individually and traded individually
but then you can arrange them in these patterns,
you can see kind of a grid on this shirt
or clustered all over the headdress.
There are also a number of objects that are made out of
materials native to North America,
he's wearing a little belt pouch on his sash
that's made out of deer hide that's been dyed a darker brown
with black walnut hulls and then decorated with
porcupine quills, same is true for his moccasins
where he has deer skin moccasins
that are decorated with porcupine quills.
- [Dr. Zucker] And those moccasins may not be Anishinaabe,
they may be Huron-Wendat which speaks to the trade networks
of the Native Americans themselves.
- [Dr. Penney] And a certain amount of craft specialization,
this is a kind of moccasin that
we see around the Great Lakes,
we think they were manufactured downriver from Detroit
but they show up all around the Great Lakes area
and we think they're made by Huron-Wendat women
and then exchanged and traded.
- [Dr. Zucker] And obviously sought after.
- [Dr. Penney] You see the tremendous craftsmanship,
particularly with the decoration on the vamp
where there are a number of different kinds of techniques,
the quills have to be processed, sorted to size,
flattened, dyed and then are applied to the surface,
sometimes in that zigzag rows you see on the outside
or in very tight woven patterns.
- [Dr. Zucker] They're really beautiful
and they're a bit iridescent.
- [Dr. Penney] And there's also an audible quality to them
this fringe of red, they're attached to little tin cones
that have been bent and that red deer hair is inserted
so that when you walk they kind of tinkle.
- [Dr. Zucker] And I see that also in the pouch on the belt
and in the headdress and I can imagine
that the silver broached also make sound
and so I can imagine just how much this outfit
comes alive when it's worn.
- [Dr. Penney] The headdress is of a turban form,
made of black cloth, decorated with those silver broaches
and standing straight up are a series of eagle feathers.
The feathers are supported by what we call feather sticks
wrapped with porcupine quills and those wonderful red
and sort of black and white checkerwork patterns
and then attached to the feather sticks
are those tassels of red dear hair.
- [Dr. Zucker] It's what we're seeing is this astonishing
synthesis of indigenous traditions with new imports
and this willingness to adopt new technologies.
- [Dr. Penney] This is really the genius
of Native women artists of this era,
they're taking these raw materials of
these manufactured products, the wool, wool yarn,
silk, metal and so on and then transforming them
with a variety of different meticulous techniques
based upon traditional techniques of working with
indigenous fibers but then updated to include
these new materials and new tools as well.
Steel needles and most importantly scissors.
- [Dr. Zucker] So we have cotton from India,
manufactured in Great Britain, sent and reworked
in the New World and then given to a British officer
who would then bring it back to Britain
and presumably even wear it, there is one example
of a man wearing and outfit from this area
in a portrait that is now in Liverpool.
I find fascinating that these cultures
that we often think of as so separate
have such an integrated relationship.
- [Dr. Penney] And of course that was the notion
of the British Empire, to knit all this together
where they were able to assemble raw materials
from all over the world, remanufacture them
or reconstitute them as marketable products.
So Andrew Foster, lieutenant of the 24th Foot
was stations in Mackinac to help this progress
of British Empire and its commercial success.
He left in 1796 and then we learn subsequently
sadly he was part of an expeditionary force
to South Africa and died in battle in 1806.
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