early 1900s
Cow bone beads, glass beads, brass beads, silk ribbon, metal coin, native-tanned hide or rawhide stringing, vegetable-tanned hide separators
Overall: 236.2 cm (93 in.)
Educational Purchase Fund 1932.50
Among the most spectacular of Plains ornaments are men’s breastplates and women’s necklaces made of cylindrical beads.
When Europeans first arrived, Plains people wore pipe-shaped beads of shell, bird bone, or other materials in their hair. It may be for this reason that white travelers applied the term “hair pipes” to the pipe-shaped beads in such necklaces as this one. Natives eventually adopted ornaments made of European pipe-shaped beads, which, after about 1880, were machine-made from cow bones. Among the most spectacular of such ornaments are men’s breastplates and women’s necklaces that sometimes fell well below the knees.
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