Bandolier bag

Bandolier bag. Lenape (Delaware tribe, Eastern Woodlands). c. 1850 C.E. Beadwork on leather.

• This is an object that invites close looking to fully appreciate the process by which colorful beads animate the bag, making a dazzling object and showcasing remarkable technical skill.
• Bandolier Bags are based on bags carried by European soldiers armed with rifles, who used the bags to store ammunition cartridges. While Bandolier Bags were made by different tribes and First Nations across the Great Lakes and Prairie regions, they differ in appearance. The stylistic differences are the result of personal preference as much contact with Europeans and Euro-Americans, goods acquired in trade, and travel.
• Bandolier Bags (like this one) are often large in size and decorated with a wide array of colorful beads and ribbons. They are worn as a cross-body bag, with a thick strap crossing a person’s chest to allow it to rest on the hip.
• These bags were especially popular in the late nineteenth century in the Eastern or Woodlands region, which comprised parts of what is today Canada and the United States. 
• Tribes forcibly removed after colonisation; despite these traumatic relocations, tribes like the Lenape continued to create objects as they had in ancestral lands. Bandolier bags are one example of this continued artistic production.
• While men most commonly wore these bags, women created them; intended to complement men’s ceremonial outfits. Men even wore more than one bag on occasion, dressing themselves in a rainbow of colors and patterns.
• Women typically produced Bandolier Bags using trade cloth, made from cotton or wool.
• Beads and other materials were embroidered on the trade cloth and hide. The tiny glass beads, called seed beads, were acquired from European traders, and they were prized for their brilliant colors. Glass beads replaced porcupine quillwork, which had a longstanding history in this area, softened and dyed.
• Once they were malleable enough to bend, the quills were woven onto the surfaces of objects (especially clothing or other cloth goods like bags). People adopted new methods for decorating the surfaces of bags, clothing, and other goods.
• Much like the glass beads, silk ribbons offered a new material with a greater variety of color choices.
• Ribbons afforded women the opportunity to produce more textural variation, and to expand the surface of the bags in new ways; moved with the wind. 
• The designs on the bag are abstracted and symmetrical.
• The Prairie Style used colorful glass beads fashioned in floral patterns. The patterns could be either naturalistic flowers or abstract floral designs.
• Bandolier Bags, as well as other objects and clothing, helped to express group identities and social status. In the wake of forced removals and threats to traditional ways of life, objects like the Bandolier Bag demonstrate the resilience and continued creativity of these groups. 
• Bandolier Bags are still made and worn today—attesting to their rich and complex history and their continuing ceremonial and cultural functions.