Lakota Woman’s Dress

Women's tanned hide dress decorated with geometric designs using glass beads. The materials, technique, and patterns seen here are typical of those used by the Lakota people at the start of the Reservation Period (1870-1920). These kinds of dresses were not worn every day, but rather on special occasions in specific ceremonies, festivals, and parades. A semi‑circular shape is usually found in the lower part of the chest of these dresses, which represents a turtle. To the Lakota people, the turtle was closely linked to the healing and protection of women and, thus, the wellbeing of whosoever wore the dress. Other decorative patterns can be seen at the top of the dress: diamond shapes, stars, and triangles, which represent teepees (the traditional homes of the nomadic peoples who lived on the plains). In cultures native to the plains, there was a marked gender division regarding labor, with each assigned specific duties; this in many ways remained throughout the Reservation Period. Women were charged with producing most of the cultural objects, particularly clothing, domestic utensils, and teepees. They were experts in treating hides—their basic raw material which was used as much in clothing as in items for storage, transportation, and their homes. These objects were decorated with glass beads and dyed porcupine quills. The men's prestige lay in their skills as hunters and their success in war, while the women's prestige was based on their ability and skills in treating hides and creating beautiful decorations with glass beads and porcupine quills.
Women are the creators of the majority of museum collection exhibits from the cultural region of the Great Plains, but all these women are anonymous. Following the confinement of North American natives to reserves, museums and collectors, especially from the United States, Canada, and Europe, started gathering objects from these societies, for fear that their culture would disappear. Despite the fact that women crafted the majority of these cultural items, no information was recorded regarding their names, because the people who collected these items did not think it was important. On the contrary, the names of the men who crafted certain objects, such as shields or pipes, were recorded, as were the names of men who wore certain clothes, especially shirts or headdresses. This dress belonged to the wife of the Lakota chief White Buffalo Man. We know her husband's name, but not her own—she was the "wife of…". This lack of interest in references to women goes further still: not only were their names as craftspeople not recorded, but the first ethnographers recorded limited information about the role of women in society, and there are many gaps still today.