Dig It - 8/7/223

Dig It Fellow Seekers! This is my Summer Show Stopper! Pretty Fab, right?! 

This is a Lakota child’s dress, 38” across and 34” long. It dates to the end of the 19th Century and was collected in 1924 from the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation, South Dakota.  Brule comes from the French word for Burnt, because this band of the Lakota are known to the Lakota as the Sicangu or “Burnt Thighs.” The Sicangu are one of the 7 sub-tribes of the Lakota. The bands that live on the Lower Brule Reservation are known as the Kul Wicasa Oyate in Lakota meaning, “lower people” because they lived further down on the White River. 

This is an incredibly sumptuous dress, and is very unusual with the use of pink beads as a background instead of the more traditional Lakota preference for blue. There is something exuberant about this dress. The maker was probably an aunt or grandmother or some other relative. Even in some of darkest times ever faced by the Lakota, the maker of the dress must have had some hope and belief that the future of the girl who this was made for, as well as the future for the tribe was going to get better. There is so much beauty and pride in this dress for all to see.

It will be available for purchase at the Whitehawk Show, Santa Fe, N.M., August  11th through the 14th. Toby Herbst - Booth 12. Be there or Be Square!