2012-11<BR> Wendat (Huron) or Wendat-Mohawk lidded box with embroidered decoration; birchbark, moosehair, pigment; l. 14.6 cm., w. 10 cm., h. 7.5 cm.; ca. 1880.<BR> This box with its hinged lid takes the form of a miniature workbasket or handbag. It is ornamented with imagined scenes of the hunting and gathering life of the forest. A woman smoking is seen on the lid, and another walks through rich vegetation toward a tripod from which hangs a trade kettle. For buyers, the disproportionate scale of the humans, plants and animals in these scenes probably added a naïve charm to the scene. Although Ten Kate recorded that this box came from the St. Regis Reservation (today Akwesasne), a Mohawk community that straddles the U.S.-Canada border in northern New York State, Ontario, and Quebec, it is typical of Wendat work (Ten Kate letter, St. Louis, Dec. 16, 1882; nr. 273, ARMV; Fenton and Tooker 1978:471). It could have been traded into Akwesasne from Lorette, or it might have been made there by a Wendat woman married into a Mohawk family.<BR> 362-5, 2012-8, 9, 11 Wendat (Huron) moosehair embroidered ware<BR> Northern Woodlands and Subarctic peoples have used the long hairs that grow under the neck of the moose to decorate clothing, accessories and other items since before European contact (Turner 1976). During the early eighteenth century, Ursuline and other French nuns at Quebec, who had learned how to use moosehair from Aboriginal women, invented new kinds of fancy wares of birchbark (Betula Papyrifera) embroidered in dyed moosehair to give as gifts to their patrons in France and North America (Barbeau 1943). They ornamented boxes, fans, pincushions and other items with floral motifs and idealized scenes of the forest life of the 'noble savage.' After the British conquest of Canada, these wares became extremely popular curiosities with the many officials and army officers who were stationed in Canada through the periods of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 (Phillips 1998:103-109; cf. Thompson 1977:134-139,143; Coe 2003:134-137; Cook 2005:230-233). <BR> By the 1830s, Wendat (Huron) women had largely taken over the production of fancy bark works, and they further developed the iconographic and stylistic traditions the nuns had established during the eighteenth century. Wendat women also used moosehair embroidery to ornament hide moccasins, cloth seat covers for chairs, tablecloths, and other items that appealed to the tastes of Victorian buyers. They actively marketed their work not only at their village of Lorette (Morissonneau 1978) but also at popular tourist spots and in cities throughout the northeast. In 1861, for example, when the German traveler Johann Kohl visited the Wendat village of Lorette, outside of Quebec City, he saw "great tons and chests full of moccasins embroidered with flowers, cigar-cases, purses, &c., all made by the women in the village, and which were, I believe, destined to be sent to Montreal, and thence probably to Niagara and New York (1861/I:180)." <BR> During the 1880s, when Ten Kate visited Niagara Falls, the quality of moosehair embroidery had begun to decline due to changes in consumer taste, shifts in the tourist market, and the advent of new forms of mass production at Lorette. By the end of the century, well organized cottage industries for the production of moccasins, snowshoes and canoes had been developed. In 1898, for example, 140.000 pairs of moccasins were made there, the bulk destined for dealers in the Great Lakes region and major cities and resorts in the eastern Canadian provinces and northeastern American states where the moccasins were sold to consumers who often used them as slippers. During his fieldwork in 1908-1909 Frank Speck was unable to identify the natural dyes with which the Huron had originally used to color the moosehair, as they had been using commercial aniline dyes for such a long time (Gérin 1901:553; Speck 1911, 1911a; Brasser 1976:43,158-159; 1998:49; Canada House 1985:14-15,20-22; Phillips 1990:29-31; 1998:125-126,142,162).<BR> (Phillips 2008-2009)<BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> Boombast, met name berkenbast, was een product dat het gehele jaar door in het gehele noordoostelijk cultuurgebied beschikbaar was en derhalve voor vele doeleinden werd gebruikt. Hutten werden bedekt met stroken boombast of matten gevlochten van boombastvezels. Van deze vezels werden ook kleding en tassen gemaakt. De houten spanten van kano's werden van een berkenbast laag voorzien. Voor het verzamelen, vervoeren, bewaren en bereiden van voedsel gebruikte men dozen van boombast, in allerlei modellen en maten, afhankelijk van het gebruik. Na de komst van de blanken werden dozen en andere soorten containers van berkenbast (bijv. brievenmappen, sigarenkokers, briletuis, theemutsen, naaimanden, e.d.) een belangrijk handelsartikel, zowel voor dagelijks gebruik (onversierd) als voor de sier. De dozen werden meestal versierd door borduurwerk met geverfde stekelvarkenspennen of geverfd elandshaar. Soms zijn het geometrische motieven, maar meestal bloemen, bladeren en afbeeldingen van personen. Door het wegkrabben van de bovenste bastlaag wordt de donkerder onderlaag zichtbaar, een "scraffitto-techniek" waarmee patronen op dozen werden aangebracht. Een nieuwe markt ontstond door de toeristenindustrie, en Niagara Falls werd een centrum voor de handel in Indiaanse souvenirs, met name met pennenwerk en elandshaar versierde berkenbast doosjes en miniatuur-kano's, maar ook onderzetters, fotolijstjes, speldenkussens, e.d. Deze markt levert tot op vandaag een belangrijke bijdrage aan het levensonderhoud van Indiaanse gezinnen uit het noordoostelijk cultuurgebied.