The Art of Cradleboards

Courageous women have long shaped America, yet their contributions have often been overlooked. This cradleboard cover from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian collection illustrates one of many stories featuring the creativity and determination of Native American women.

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

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.

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.

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.

Located on the northern edge of Lake Michigan, the fort was a strategic hub for both Indigenous peoples—the Anishinaabe, Wendat, and Dakota—who lived, hunted, and traded in the region, and colonial powers—the English, French, and Americans—who vied for domination of the area through warfare and diplomacy.

The exchange of valued gifts, both practical (such as food) and symbolic (such as silver or quilled objects), was an important aspect of Anishinaabe-British diplomacy.

Although it is impossible to know exactly how Lieutenant Foster acquired this quilled panel, it is likely he was offered it as a diplomatic present along with other items he is known to have received. Such a gift would have signified that the region Foster had entered was a vibrant nexus of Indigenous life controlled by the Anishinaabe.

It was, in other words, a physical world of forests, rivers, lakes, and trails, and a spiritual world animated by powerful cosmological beings who inhabited not only the earth but also the sky and the deepest bodies of water.

Anishinaabe women made their spiritual environment visible—and mindful—for their British allies, as well as for themselves, through this profoundly meaningful form of visual expression.