Tribal Arts

Plains Indian Child’s Beaded Shirt, ca. 1850

Appraisal: Plains Indian Child’s Beaded Shirt, ca. 1850

Transcript

GUEST: All I know is what my mother-in-law told us about it. She said that her great-grandparents had a trading post up around Luna Canyon in Mora County. And these Indians came in one day for supplies. And they didn't have the money to pay for the supplies, but they had a, a boy with them that was wearing this jacket. He was reddish-haired and, uh, blue-eyed. So they figured, "Well, you know, he probably came from some settlement somewhere." But anyway, they offered the boy in exchange for the supplies. And so they took him in, and they raised him and educated him. And then in later years, when he was grown, he, uh, married one of their daughters.

APPRAISER: Well, this little boy's shirt comes from a time when the world, especially this part of the world, was in great change. This was probably made around the time they got it, which was s -- about 1850. If you looked at a map in 1840, ten years earlier, Mora County was into the Republic of Texas.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: If you went back 30 years before that, it was Mexico.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: If you went back 30 years before that, it was the Spanish frontier. And there was something called the Santa Fe Trail, and it went from around St. Louis to here. One of the biggest stops on the trail was in Mora County and was where all the trading operations were located.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: And it was also a time when all that land was disputed. There was constant conflict. There were captives taken on both sides. Captives were exchanged. And this little boy was probably one of those captives. They obviously thought a lot of him.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: Or they wouldn't have put him in this beautiful shirt.

GUEST: Yeah. And you know, he must've been pretty strong, too, because that thing's heavy.

APPRAISER (chuckling): Well, it's a lot... (chuckles) Well, all of this is glass.

GUEST: Oh, it's glass?

APPRAISER: It's all glass beads. And if you flip it over, you see where they're stitched it out...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And you flip it over again, And it's fully beaded on the back, too.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: So yeah, it has some weight to it.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: These beads are called pony beads. They're a larger bead, and they're the first beads that were traded in North America. This is all sewn with animal sinew. These beads were strung, an awl poked a hole, and it was stitched. So it took a significant amount of time to do this.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: Another thing that's very telling about this is, if you look up here around the neck, this is bison hide. So this was when the buffalo were still here.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: And all these tribes were subsisting off bison.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: It was before the big shoot-offs and, and when they annihilated the herds.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: Now, this is deerskin.

GUEST: Ah.

APPRAISER: So it's a combination, but the main body of it is bison.

GUEST: Oh, really?

APPRAISER: And that kind of helps date it-- after 1876...

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: ...there were very few bison left in North America.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: So this is in the early days piece.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: One of the things you asked me about was who would've made this. And I talked with one of my colleagues. Our primary thinking was, well, who, who was in that area? The power tribe were the Comanche.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: They controlled everything up there. A possible group would have been the Apache, because they were in competition, and they were a little bit further south, but they were all over that area, too, especially the Mescalero.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: But then we got to looking at these... These look like arrow points or spear points, down here at the bottom. And that is very characteristic of the Kiowa.

GUEST: Oh, really?

APPRAISER: And the Kiowa were, they're a very small tribe, but they were from the Northern Rockies, like the Comanche.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: They spoke a, a different language, but they were very close, and they worked together a lot, not only in, in war, in battle, but also they were connected socially. The other thing is, these cranberry-colored pony beads were something the Kiowa love. And so we can't be sure, but we do think that it's possibly a Kiowa shirt, mm-hmm.

GUEST: Kiowa? Okay.

APPRAISER: There's very little that survives from that time period or from those people.

GUEST: Yeah, my mother-in-law had it in a, uh, chest, and then when she got sick, she decided to give it to my husband. We bought a table with a glass top and a drawer, and we had it in there. And then Forrest Fenn gave us an appraisal. I mean, he offered so much money for it.

APPRAISER: What was his appraisal?

GUEST: He wanted to give us $10,000 for it.

APPRAISER: That was probably around 2000, 2001?

GUEST: 2001, I think.

APPRAISER: Things have changed.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: I would expect a retail price on this of around $150,000.

GUEST: Oh, really?

APPRAISER: Yes.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: If you were to insure it... It's hard for me to say the words, even, "replacement value." There is no replacement.

GUEST: Yeah.