Bandolier Bag, 1870–1900
Ojibwe or Ho-Chunk, Wisconsin
Glass beads, cotton, and wool yarn
Lent by Wisconsin Historical Society
Bandolier Bag, 1890–1909
Ho-Chunk, collected in Black River Falls, Wisconsin
Glass beads, cotton, and wool yarn
Lent by Wisconsin Historical Society
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Great Lakes Indian women used commercially produced beads and cloth to create colorful and intricately patterned bags. They are known today as “bandolier bags” due to their wide straps, which were worn over the shoulder and across the chest. By the 1870s the bags were an important element of formal dress worn by men (and occasionally women) to public events including treaty signings and inter-tribal gatherings as well as posed portrait photographs. Although they were a new form made from non-indigenous goods, bandolier bags quickly became highly visible symbols of Native identity to American Indians and Euro-Americans alike. At a time when the federal government aggressively pursued policies of Native assimilation, making or wearing a bandolier bag asserted not only cultural persistence but flourishing cultural activity.
The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database features more bandolier bags from the Wisconsin Historical Society’s collections.
Detail of Ho-Chunk Bandolier Bag (1, 2)