Cloth Doll Wearing Black Strap Dress Ensemble

Cloth Doll Wearing Black Strap Dress Ensemble

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Female doll has stuffed cloth body with face sewn on. She is wearing a strap dress of black woollen fabric with green wool tape straps decorated with otter tail beadwork in red seed beads. She also wears black woolen leggings and sleeves, trimmed with red ribbon and white seed beads. Her regalia is finished off with deerhide moccasins.

1899-1903

Anishinaabe

Leech Lake, MN

This doll is one of a set of five dolls, two female and three male dolls, that share similarities, the most obvious of which is that the male dolls' shirts are all made from the same rather unique cotton print fabric.

Inexpensive woolen cloth, silk ribbon, glass seed beads, deerskin.

Probably collected between 1899 and 1903 by Thisba Hutson Morgan (1872-1966), wife of Bureau of Indian Affairs employee Howell Morgan (1863-1952), who was stationed at Leech Lake, Minnesota; inherited by their son Cecil Morgan (1898-1999); donated to MAI by Cecil Morgan in 1983.

Male Doll Wearing Fur Turban; Female Doll Wearing Black Strap Dress

Cory Willmott. 2022. Decolonizing the Museum to Reclaim and Revitalize the Anishinaabe Strap Dress. Winterthur Portfolio 55(2):145-7

47.35561, -94.25664 (N 47°21′20″ W 94°15′24″)

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