While the incorporation of manufactured items clearly indicates Anishinaabe interaction with Europeans who were long trading in the region, the five animal patterns worked into the quilled panel likely represent underwater panthers, powerful spiritual beings who inhabited the underworld.

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Anishinaabe women excelled in quillwork, a couched embroidery technique, and (not unlike English ecclesiastical embroidered textiles) their iconography often expressed their understanding of the cosmos and its life-giving powers.

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This rare, late-eighteenth-century quilled panel was made by an Anishinaabe woman for her infant child.

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The panel was acquired between 1792 and 1794 by Andrew Foster, a young lieutenant in the British Army, at what was then the westernmost outpost of the British Empire, Fort Michilimackinac.

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Part of a cradleboard used to transport a swaddled baby, it is embroidered with black, white, and red porcupine quills, and is further decorated with brass cones and glass beads, both trade items, and red-dyed deer hair.

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