Growing up in California, my family took a lot of vacations around the southwest of the U.S. One of my favorite parts of these trips was stopping at souvenir stands outside places like Four Corners or National parks and talking my parents into buying me a beaded belt or beaded keychain from one of the Native artists. I loved the patterns and the colors: they felt like a reflection of the locations we had visited. These beaded mementos were part of the background of memories and experiences that inspired my love of embroidery and textiles in general.
Although these souvenirs were prized items to me, I’ll acknowledge a lack of understanding of the importance of the patterns that were used or how these items might have been changed from their original purpose within specific tribes in order to appeal to tourists. As Summer wound down this year, I was thinking about those vacations and I decided to dig into some reading about the history of Native American beaded art as souvenirs.
The popularity of Native beadwork as souvenir began in Niagara Falls in the 1800s. A variety of beaded products were initially provided, however in the Victorian era, beaded bags became the trend and Native beaded bags became the focus of the souvenirs that were offered at Niagara Falls.[1]
(Photo from the book “A Cherished Curiosity")
Native women adapted traditional skills to appeal to the Euro-American tourist markets. For instance, some of the traditional designs that represented nature were modified for these bags to focus on floral designs that were more popular with the tourists. [2]
(Photo from the book “A Cherished Curiosity"
For this reason, late nineteenth century ethnologists considered beaded souvenir bags and tourist art as cultural corruption and inauthentic. However, since the 1970s, attitudes have changed and the work is recognized as a legitimate representation of Native “worldview” as for most Native people the choice was assimilation or extermination. “In this sense the making of souvenir art was not a cultural betrayal but a strategy to ensure cultural survival.” [3]
(Photo from the book “A Cherished Curiosity”)
One of the interesting things that A Cherished Curiosity points out is that some of the bags have a few off colored beads in the design. While beads were sold in hanks and occasionally had off colored beads, the author thinks this is more likely a reflection of the practice of Indian handcrafts to include an imperfection in order to provide a gateway for bad spirits. If you had any negative thoughts during creation of an artwork, the one odd bead would release it. [4]
(Photo from the book “A Cherished Curiosity”)
I love this idea for a number of reasons. For one thing I think it reflects the importance of handmade goods in general: they have defects and imperfections and hence a heart and soul that manufactured goods can’t replicate. It also reflects how traditions can be maintained even in art that is being created to appeal to an outside market.
A similar tourist souvenir that was also sold at Niagara Falls was the beaded pincushion. During the mid 1800s, with the advent of industrialization, pins became inexpensive and were also necessary due to the complexity of ladies’ clothing. They were often carried on pocket sized pincushions and stored on fancy pincushions. [5]
(Photo from the Post-Journal)
Similar to the souvenir beaded bags, creating and selling beaded souvenir pincushions in Niagara Falls supplemented the income of many tribes which had declined with the continued loss of their hunting and
farming lands. [6] Due to the popularity of these beaded souvenirs, by 1850 women’s publications were telling readers how to bead like the Native Americans.
The Oneida Indian Nation website has a post on their collection of beadwork items which include the pincushions and bags made for sale at Niagara Falls in the 18th and 19th centuries. [7]
(Photo from the Oneida Indian Nation website)
(Photo from the Oneida Indian Nation website)
The Oneida Nation website beautifully describes the importance of these items: "Haudenosaunee regard bead working as a gift from the Creator to teach patience and humility. Such a gift should be used and shared. Often beadwork was carried on by women of different generations who talked, as they worked, of their community and its history. In such a setting, these beaded creations took on deep personal meanings. Stories, llovingly interwoven into every beaded flower, petal and stalk, told of what it meant to be Oneida and Haudenosaunee”. [8]
The traditional beadwork techniques are continuing to be taught and celebrated. The Oneida Nations Arts Program teaches courses on raised beadwork techniques. [9] They also host the International Iroquois Beadwork Conference which brings together scholars of raised beadwork.
Current artists are also taking traditional beading and using it in new ways that still honor the past. One of my favorites is “The Red Dress” collaboration between Dr. Jessica Metcalfe and Tyra Jerome . [10] The dress is a beautiful homage to the traditional buckskin dresses of the Northern Plains created in red velvet. The necklace incorporates beadwork imagery of the Turtle Mountains, the medicine wheel, the cycles of life, and the wild prairie rose. The collaboration was "designed to bring awareness to the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women from throughout the US and Canada who were taken from their families too soon, and their perpetrators were either not pursued or were not convicted."
(Photo from Beyond Buckskin)
(Photo from Beyond Buckskin)
This return of traditional beadwork to reflecting the vision of Native artists is inspiring. There are not many textile techniques that originated in North America and Native beadwork is a tradition that is not just being preserved but modernized and used to express the views of current Native artists. For me, reading up on the background of an item I loved as a child, gave me more appreciation for the beadwork technique itself and the people who utilized their art in a practical way in order survive and at the same time protected the soul of their art and maintained it into the present.
References:
[1] Gerry Biron, A Cherished Curiosity, The Souvenir Beaded Bag in Historic Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Art, (Gerry Biron, 2012) 6-7
[2] Biron, 14-15
[3] Biron, 2-3
[4] Biron, 35-36
[5] Phoebe Forbes, Beaded Pincushions (November 2016) https://www.post-journal.com/life/features/2016/11/beaded-pincushions/
[6] Forbes
[7] Oneida Beadwork Collection Offers Magnificent Artistry https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/oneida-beadwork-collection-offers-magnificent-artistry/
[8] Oneida Beadwork Collection Offers Magnificent Artistry
[9] Oneida Nations Arts Program https://www.oneidanationarts.org/index.html
[10] Dr. Jessica R. Metcalfe, The Red Dress, II (2019) (January 2019) http://www.beyondbuckskin.com/2019/01/the-red-dress-ii-2019.html
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