A parfleche is a Native American rawhide container that is embellished by painting, incising, or both.
Envelope-shaped parfleches have historically been used to contain items such as household tools or foods, such as dried meat or pemmican. They were commonly made in pairs and hung from saddles. Their designs may have once served as maps. [2] In contemporary usage, they may carry social, spiritual, and symbolic meaning, or be part of dance or parade regalia.
The bags are usually decorated with a distinctive style of graphic artwork, often symbolizing landscape features such as rivers and mountains. [2] Historically women were the main creators of parfleches, [1] first painting stretched-out raw hides, then shaping them into their final form. In the 21st century, both women and men make them.
The increased mobility among the post-contact Plains Indians horse culture required that essential goods such as preserved foods (including pemmican), clothing, medicines, and ceremonial items be transported efficiently in lightweight and weatherproof packaging. [3] : 29. While the most common form of the parfleche was the folded envelope or flat wallet, they were also constructed as laced flat cases, cylinders, and trunks. [3] : 59.
The production of parfleche bags declined drastically when mercenaries hired by the US federal government slaughtered the buffalo herds to the brink of extinction. The federal government forced Indigenous peoples to relocate onto government-partitioned reservations. [3] : 38. While less visible to the colonists who were collecting them for museums, some tribes, particularly the Nez Perce were able to continue hunting and making parfleches throughout the 20th century. The Niisitapi and Lakota people continue to produce parfleches today. [3] : 39.
The name "parfleche" was initially used by French fur traders in the region, and derives from the French language parer meaning "to parry" or "to defend", and flèche meaning "arrow". [4] : 717. "Parfleche" was also used to describe tough rawhide shields, but later used primarily for these decorated rawhide containers. [4] : 717. Different Indigenous peoples have their own names for these versatile packages, including ho'sēō'o (Cheyenne), [5] bishkisché (Apsáalooke) [6] and ho'úwoonó3 (Hinono'eino). [7] [8] : 25.
Historically parfleches were almost exclusively made by women. [1] : 101. Creation began with “fleshing”, or the removal of the hide from animals such as elk, deer, and most commonly buffalo. [8] : 29. Craftswomen employed bone tools fashioned as chisels for fleshing. [9] The hide was stretched by staking it above the ground, and scraped to an even thickness. [8] : 29–30. A glutinous wash (prepared of prickly pear cactus juice or animal glue) was applied for protection before the moist hide was painted. [8] : 32. Until the 1890s, natural paints were overwhelmingly used, formed using substances such as charcoal for black, algae for green, and yellow ochre for red. [3] : 44. Because artists had a limited amount of time to paint the parfleche design, they had to work with boldness and expertise as revisions were not possible. [3] : 53. Once the paint was dry, the craftswomen de-haired the opposite side of the hide using a “stoning” method, and cut the outline of the parfleche using a flint or metal knife. [3] : 54. Lastly, the container was folded into its chosen shape and holes were cut or burned to insert ties and laces. [3] : 54.
Historically, the Native women with the most talent in producing parfleches, the painted designs, and similar items, have held respected positions in their communities. [1] : 101. [4] : 716. These women historically formed local guilds, choosing elders to oversee the preservation, practice and teaching of these skills to their proteges. [3] : 54. The guilds can also be credited with the consistency in parfleche design across multiple nations, as they preserve and pass down the customary designs, symbolism, meanings, and techniques. [3] : 105.
While parfleches have been stolen, collected, and admired as art pieces, their 19th-century creators (renowned in their own communities during their own times) have remained largely unknown to colonial anthropologists, collectors, and museum curators, and thus their names tend not to be known. [3] : 25.
The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke, also spelled Absaroka, are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation, the Crow Indian Reservation, located in the south-central part of the state.
The Arapaho are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota.
The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.
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Kiowa or Ka'igwa people are a Native American tribe and an indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries, and eventually into the Southern Plains by the early 19th century. In 1867, the Kiowa were moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.
Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.
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Ledger art is a term for narrative drawing or painting on paper or cloth, predominantly practiced by Plains Indian, but also from the Plateau and Great Basin. Ledger art flourished primarily from the 1860s to the 1920s. A revival of ledger art began in the 1960s and 1970s. The term comes from the accounting ledger books that were a common source of paper for Plains Indians during the late 19th century.
Lois Smoky Kaulaity (1907–1981) was a Kiowa beadwork artist and a painter, one of the Kiowa Six, from Oklahoma.
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