Santee Sioux Beaded Hide Trousers, Floral Motifs

Santee Sioux, eastern Plains

1890

Native hide, glass beads, sinew

With museum mount 28" x 47.5" (71.1 x 120.7 cm)

Provenance: Estate, Lincoln, Nebraska

Beaded hide trousers were prestige garments worn by men of standing among the Santee Sioux and related eastern Dakota peoples, the beaded decoration covering the surface in a manner that expressed both the maker's skill and the wearer's social position within the community. The Santee Sioux beadwork tradition incorporated floral and naturalistic motifs alongside geometric forms, reflecting the eastern Plains and Great Lakes influence on Dakota decorative arts that distinguished it from the predominantly geometric vocabulary of the western Plains nations. Trousers with this density and variety of beadwork represent significant undertakings in women's decorative production, the scattered floral and butterfly motifs requiring individual planning and placement across a large and complex garment surface.

This pair is covered across both legs with scattered floral, butterfly, and leaf motifs in a polychrome palette of blue, red, green, yellow, and purple on the natural hide ground, sinew-sewn throughout. The variety and distribution of the motifs give the surface an exuberant pictorial quality distinct from the more formally organized compositions of Plains geometric beadwork. Provenance traces to an estate in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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