AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLETS 
Thus we see how colors and established designs may be chosen for 
ornamental reasons and yet adapted to a wish or idea in the mind of the 
worker. But not all examples of beadwork have this significance for the 
same artistic excellence may be sought and attained with no thought of 
design names and the ideas they may call up. 
Fig. 15. Design from a Dakota Pipe Bag. 
The bag is in the case for Dakota art, Plains Indian 
Hall. This is a good example of how a pictorial meaning 
may be read into a design. Thus the maker of this bag 
made the following statement: The whole represents a 
battle scene. The white is snow. The two long green 
lines are toindicate the flight of arrows. The projecting 
lines at the end represent the wounds made by the 
arrows. The arrow point is represented by the 
triangular figures opposite the projecting lines, these 
being shown again as attached to the point of the arrow | 
(a). The large central figure is the body of a man: the 
diamond-shaped portion representing the trunk, and 
the appendages, the head, arms, and legs. The dark 
blue color of the trunk-figure implies that the man is 
dead. The small white rectangles enclosing a red spot 
represent the hits or wounds that brought the man 
down. On the upper part of the bag the border figure (c) 
represents a victory in which the owner’s horse, repre- 
sented by the green diamond-shaped figure, was 
wounded, as shown by the red area within the horse 
symbol; b represents a feather, and implies that the 
owner of the bag was entitled to wear an eagle feather 
in his hair as a sign that he had killed an enemy. The 
figures of the pipe indicate the owner’s right to carry 
the official peace pipe. 
The parts of this design are not new and so not 
original with the maker of the bag, but were selected by 
her to express these ideas and events, relating to the 
life of the man for whom she made it. Even the choice 
of designs was not wholly original, for it was the custom 
of her people to look upon certain designs as having a 
fixed meaning. Thus by looking at his pipe bag another 
Indian might read the deeds of the owner. 




20 

