Maker once known

Plains Indigenous tradition

ca. 1850-90s

Possibly originating from the same community as the single adult moccasin in this collection, this pair of child moccasins features a lane stitch (also known as lazy stitch) technique that is common among Plains Indigenous peoples. The use of glass beads suggests that the moccasins were crafted in the second half of the nineteenth century, after Plains peoples had begun trading for these beads from settlers. 

As with the adult moccasin, the leather of the child’s moccasins is dehydrated and fragile, suggesting they were stored improperly for some time or possibly even subject to water damage. Significant wear on the toes and fraying at the seams indicates that these shoes were worn at some point, whether by someone in the maker’s community, or by a child in Nelson’s extended family in New York.

The origins of the adult moccasin or the child moccasins are unknown. Nelson might have been gifted the shoes by an expedition member who had spent time in the Plains regions, such as George Bird Grinnell or Frederick Dellenbaugh. 

George Bird Grinnell spent much of his career as a scout on government-sponsored expeditions to Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota, and often served as a mediator between the Indigenous peoples of those regions and settler expedition parties. Speaking to his fellow members of the Alaska expedition for their shipboard lecture series, the naturalist George Bird Grinnell described his anthropological studies of the Pikuni band of the Siksikaitsitapi, or Blackfoot Confederacy. 

He claimed to have a close relationship with Chief White Calf of the Pikuni Blackfeet, a fact which he shared with the other members of the Alaska journey. Nelson noted in his summary of Grinnell’s lecture that “Mr. Grinnell, on account of friendliness which he has shown them, has been chosen by them as their Chief; they call him ‘The Father of his people.’” But Grinnell was not a true ally to the Blackfeet; he believed that Christianization would ensure the best future for Indigenous peoples of the so-called United States, and openly admired the assimilationist logics of Reverend William Duncan during the Harriman expedition’s visit to Duncan’s missionary school at Metlakatla. 

In his many trips to the Plains regions and his visits with the Blackfeet, it is possible that Grinnell acquired moccasins that he later would share with members of the Harriman expedition. However, the bifurcated tongue seen on Nelson’s adult moccasin is not common in Blackfoot moccasin styles. Frederick Dellenbaugh had also traveled widely as an expeditionary assistant into regions that neighbored the lands of Sioux tribes who might have made these moccasins. 

References

“Sioux Style Lazy Stitch Beadwork.” Matoska Trading Company Inc., https://www.matoska.com/siouxlazystitch.htm.

“Lakota Sioux Moccasins.” Timothy S. Y. Lam Museum of Anthropology, https://lammuseum.wfu.edu/2018/07/lakota-sioux-moccasins/.

“Man’s Moccasins.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/641604.