Ceremonial clothing such as headdresses, mantles, intricate interlocking bags and baskets have been recovered from elite mound burials in Spiro, Oklahoma and some other items have been found in places like Etowah, but little had been recovered from village sites until Wickliffe. The evidence comes from printed ceramics on cloth that very clearly describes the techniques used to make braided textiles from a variety of plant fibers, including thinning (hemp); nettle and milkweed. The woody stems are harvested in the fall and inside there are fibers that intertwine to make a twine and from there the sky is the limit. The increased number of complex structural trends parallels the increased social complexity deduced from Mississippi settlement configurations. (Penelope Ballad Drooker) Which means that the more textile construction techniques there are and the more complex they become, it seems to be a reflection of the increasing complexities in everyday life.

Unfortunately, there is an extremely limited amount of textile material remaining to investigate, however large Mississippi textiles, such as those from earlier periods, tend to come in rectangular shapes that are used for skirts, mantles, and blankets. Three-dimensional objects such as bags and sachets are also common. There is much more to textile manufacturing than what is found in archaeological sites. Questions remain as to whether this was a task relegated to one gender or whether both participated. Although cultures and societies came and went, often without explanation, sophisticated types of fabrics were used during the period of contact.

Moravian missionary David Zeisburger left diaries with details of braided clothing worn only a generation earlier. It was among the Delaware in Ohio in the mid to late 18th century. The Hovey Lake archaeological site in extreme southwestern Indiana is a site that was populated from about 1400 to 1700 with remains of the Angel Mound people. They seem to have continued the tradition of making clothes and using interlocking fabrics to print ceramics. Cheryl Ann Munson’s interpretation of Hovey Lake on this issue is expressed very clearly on the Hovey Lake website, “The villagers wove a variety of cloth items such as blankets, coats, skirts and bags, using spun yarns. made of vegetable fibers. Knotted nets were another type of fabric. “

There are few descriptions of this type of clothing worn by the natives after contact, therefore, again, the lack of evidence to specifically state that the use of vegetable fibers continued well into the seventeenth century. There are a few visual pieces that can be interpreted as being made of plant fibers, including one by artist John White in 16th century Virginia of a “religious man” depicted with a short interlaced cape that covers the left arm and leaves the right arm exposed. There is substantial evidence to strongly suggest that the basic pre and proto-contact garment worn by women was a wrap skirt. Typically described as knee length, this garment was transferred to the fabric trade in the mid-18th century. Some resources mention skirts of native cloth from Virginia and North Carolina said to be made of “silk grass with a bottom fringe.”

Men appear to have worn cloaks as a single robe as a garment or perhaps in combination with or over a loincloth. Women are almost always described wearing cloaks in combination with a skirt. These “styles” continued into the 18th century when woolen, cotton, silk, and linen fabrics were introduced through trade. In the mid-18th century, Thomas Davies began to illustrate ferrets and other Great Lakes people, constantly dressing women in a type of commercial cloth skirt and woolen leggings. The shirts seem to be highly valued in terms of what the natives trade. Cotton from India and the Middle East reached the trading centers of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes. It ranked higher than commercial rifles on high-demand product lists. Shirts were worn over skirts and loincloths with woolen blankets that replaced the previous vegetable fiber blankets. Silk ribbons in a variety of colors and sizes were also in high demand. Many of the earliest examples the author has seen in museums and collections use one or two colors of silk ribbons in multiple rows starting at the hem of a garment and sometimes reaching the middle of the waist. Along with this came the use of commercial silver earrings, ear, cone and ball wheels, triangular pieces that are worn on both the nose and ears, silver crosses, and brooches from the size of a small button to ring clasps. placed in multiple rows and, in some cases, with geometric effects. designer patterns on shirts and skirts.

Silk scarves were worn around the head as a turban in men and were sometimes used to wrap the neck in women. The use of silver brooches in silk scarves and blankets continued to increase towards the end of the 18th century. There was also a change in the way silk ribbons were used in the late 18th century and it was fully developed in 1802 as a cutting silk appliqué style that became very popular and was widely represented in the valley of Wabash by the English painter George. Winter. He spent 1838-1839 with the Miami and Potawatomi Indians of central and northern Indiana. His dozens of portraits give insight into the life and culture of the last days of these extraordinary people before the forced removals by the United States government changed their lives and traditions forever. Silk turbans and shoulder-length hair on men became the norm. In the eighteenth century we see men with shaved heads, locks of scalp, wasteweh or cockroach attached to the scalp. Men of the 18th century appear to have their ears cropped and pierced to accommodate an additional outer row of earrings, wampum, or other ornamentation.

Leggings from the 19th century show a wider band or wing flap where the two halves of the fabric were sewn and embellished with silk appliqués. Both men and women used finger-woven girdles or belts, but now they are made of wool or yarn threads rather than plant fibers. Loafers replaced fiber sandals and were constructed primarily from a single piece of leather, usually elk or buffalo. They had fins, were of center seam construction, and were often adorned with porcupine quills on the lapels and sometimes the center seam. The fringe on the lapels consisted of tin or silver cones, each with a tuft of red or orange hair extending from it. Sometimes white glass beads were sewn to the edges of the lapels, giving a finished look. In the 1830s, silk ribbon work dominated the lapels of Miami and Potwatomi loafers in the central Great Lakes region and the Ohio Valley, as well as between Potawatomi and the Menominee of Wisconsin. Miami, Potawatomi, Piankeshaw, or other tribes in this region did not make extensive use of beads to create appliqué work until they were relocated to Kansas and Oklahoma. Museum collections in Canada, Chicago, Grand Rapids, and elsewhere support this evidence.

As George Winter pointed out, these garments with elegant silk ribbons and men’s frock coats, silk umbrellas for women, and silk shawls were worn regularly and not just for funerals or ceremonies. Winter stayed in the log cabin belonging to the captive Frances Slocum and made numerous observations in her journals about it.

A marked change in the blouse or shirt worn by women occurred in the early 19th century. Kakima Burnett, a Potawatomi woman who was married to an American merchant, was heavily influenced by the Catholic nuns and missionaries who frequented Potawatomi villages in southwestern Michigan when the Burnetts established a business operation in 1780. Kakima was the daughter of the Chief Aniquiba and sister of Topenebee. , chief chief of Potawatomi in southwestern Michigan. They were married by a Catholic priest in Detroit. Her children were raised in Detroit by Catholic nuns. One of the sons came to the Fort Wayne, Indiana area and was associated with Issac McCoy, a missionary among the Indians. Kakima came to Indiana after the death of her husband sometime towards the end of the war of 1812. With all the influence of “Black Robes”, Kakima and other women of the same origin and culture began to emulate nuns using big collars on their shirts. By the 1830s, it is clear that this style or tradition had taken root in the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley. George Winter represents many of the women of Potawtomi and Miami, some who were not necessarily of the Catholic faith, wearing blouses or high-collared shirts. The large capes gave the women additional ways to embellish their garments with silver brooches and silk ribbons. The earliest known illustration is of a woman wearing a cape blouse in the Detroit area around 1814. Another early depiction clearly shows a Senecan woman from western New York with one while teaching young Iroquois children in a longhouse. .

After researching countless garments from this period, there seemed to be two decidedly different types of cape blouses. One that reached to the stomach and another that was long and was called the waist. The shorter styles may be those worn by the single women in the town until the moment they took a husband. Then the longer, fuller styles with a larger center opening seem to be worn by married women who are going to have children, making it easier to breastfeed through the larger neck opening. More research is still being done on this.

In the late 1830s and 1840s, thousands of these central Wabash and Ohio Valley natives were forced to leave their homes and go west to Kansas and then Oklahoma. Ribbed skirts, cape blouses and leggings, and even loincloths, were part of a tradition that remained partially intact in Oklahoma until the 20th century. There are reflections of this pre-elimination era in modern pow wows, but many cross-cultural adaptations have been made since then.

Many other items left with family members were sold to collectors as spare food and change during the Depression era. There are significant collections of Miami clothing and other material cultural items at the Cranbrook Institute in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. There are some Potawatomi items in the Chicago Field Museum collections. 18th- and 19th-century bags, loafers, finger-woven sashes, and knife sheaths are scattered throughout Europe, often taken as war effects or gifts during trade or treaty negotiations over the centuries. XVIII and XIX by the military officers. Others were sold to collectors in New York and California.

Many items from various Great Lakes and Ohio Valley tribes are found in the hindquarters stored at the American Indian Museum on the Mall in Washington DC. stored in cluttered storage rooms and drawers. There are several books, mostly out of print, among them “Bou Jou Nee Jee”; “Spirit Sings Collection” and “Patterns of Power, McMichael’s Canadian Collection” which were published on the basis of exhibits from the 1970s and 1980s. They have a fairly large selection of items that have been carefully studied by historians and reenactors who want to recreate clothing and feather work, finger weaving, and the silver trade and be as accurate and authentic as possible when speaking to the public and working with students.