652 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 2 8 



Women of the Plains tribes wore a sleeveless dress cut and sewed 

 as a 1-piece garment. Formerly the Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Osage 

 women wore a 2-piece dress consisting of a skirt and a cape, which 

 is more typical of the woodlands tribes of the Eastern States. 



Tribal leaders and those enjoying social distinction within their 

 group not only bedecked themselves with a highly ornamental 

 feather headdress with its long streamer of eagle feathers, but were 

 entitled to wear a so-called war shirt. This garment, also known as 

 the scalp shirt, does not belong to the regular costume, but when 

 stripped of its decorative ornaments and accessories resembles the 

 typical shirt of tanned deerskin. The w^earing of the decorated war 

 shirt was peculiar to the northern Assiniboin, Crow, Dakota, and 

 Blackfoot, but has been adopted by the Kiowa, Osage, Arapaho, and 

 other southern Plains tribes. The northern Shoshoni, Cree, Dene, 

 and other northern tribes of the Plains had long ago taken over the 

 use of shirts of tanned leather. 



In the Museum figure of a Sioux Indian warrior (pi. 20) there is 

 shown the use of a somewhat modified form of a war ,shirt trimmed 

 with beadwork, cut fringe, and scalp trophies. Other objects of 

 personal adornment and of wearing apparel are a plume of eagle 

 feathers, necklace of bear's claws, cincture of flannel, trousers of deer- 

 skin dyed green, and moccasins ornamented with porcupine quills. 

 In his right hand the figure carries the old stone war club of the 

 Sioux; the face is that of Kicking Bear, a Sioux medicine man who 

 was prominent with Sitting Bull in the gho,st dance craze among the 

 Sioux in 1890. A cast was made when he visited the Museum in 

 1902, at which time the costume was also secured from him. The 

 decoration painted in kaolin on his hair is a cross within a circle and 

 is a heraldic device signifying an act of prowess in which he saved 

 a friend under the fire of the enemy. 



The Sioux Indians belong to the Siouan family, formerly having 

 a wide distribution west of the Mississippi Valley as far southward 

 as the borders of Louisiana. Detached tribes were also living at the 

 time of the discovery in the mountain regions of Virginia and North 

 Carolina. 



The Comanche Indians formerly ranged the southern Plains prin- 

 cipally in the region now the State of Texas, but what is left of the 

 tribe now lives in Oklahoma. They belong to the Shoshonean stock, 

 but their arts and industries are those of the tribes of the Plains, 

 though somewhat ruder, and these arts have little resemblance to 

 those of their own kin, the Utes. The specimens exhibited in the 

 Museum are cradles, lances, shields, saddle, beadwork, and costume. 



The Utes and other Shoshoneans ranged from Utah to ;Montana 

 and Washington. This case (pi. 21) contains costumes of an early 

 day collected by Maj. J. W. Powell, Emile Granier, and others. 



