Beadwork takes Andersons to heart of the Smithsonian

With curator Emil Her Many Horses accompanying them, Craig and Nancy Anderson of rural Merrill went on an expedition through the archives of the Smithsonian's Museum earlier this month. Her Many Horses has been a friend of the Andersons for about 25 years, thanks to a shared interest in Native American beaded art, and he helped them get inside the archives. [Click to enlarge]

One hundred and fifty years ago, a baby giggled as he bounced lightly in the beaded buffalo-hide cradle strapped to his mother's back as she made her way across the plains.

Today, the cradle is miles away, empty, resting silently in a clean white drawer, tucked deep into the archives of the Smithsonian museum.

But just recently, the drawer cracked open. Light spilled in onto the cradle, and a pair of hands reached in and gently scooped it up.

Craig Anderson's hands.

The rural Merrill man and his wife Nancy were treated to a rare chance to explore the archives of the Smithsonian's Native American beadwork collection this month during a visit to Washington D.C.

Nancy and Craig are enthusiasts, scholars, lovers of Native American beadwork.

So when their friend Emil Her Many Horses, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, gave them the special invite into the Smithsonian's depths, they weren't going to turn him down.

"This is the stuff people don't usually get to see," Craig said.

The Andersons made their way to the museum's archives in Suitland, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C.

Beadwork (clockwise from top): A schoolteacher on a reservation received this beaded cigar box as a gift. The intricate designs were laid out only in the beader's mind. This small dress is on display in the Smithsonian. The Andersons said it was a Sioux girl's dress, probably from 1885 to 1895. The intense beadwork shows the importance placed on family, since the beader would work for days to make a dress the child would soon outgrow. Beaded turtles like this one, about three inches across, were made for a baby girl when she was born. Inside was stuffed a piece of the umbilical cord. Boys received a beaded lizard. The lizard may have been picked for boys because of their speed and agility, while turtles represented a steady pace for the girls. [Click to enlarge]

After they got through the armed security check, Craig, Nancy and Emil stepped into a clean warehouse with controlled temperature, humidity and light to best preserve the artifacts. The room was filled with stacks reaching from the floor to 15 feet, made up of drawers. Each drawer held a new treasure.

Baby cradles, beaded in white and red and green and blue. A buffalo hide dress beaded so tightly with yellow glass that it shimmers in the light. Moccasins that were shaped to be an exact fit for the feet of a Cheyenne girl more than a century ago.

"There are about 800,000 objects just in the Museum of the Native American alone," Craig said. "They allowed us to handle just about anything -- they gave us each gloves -- and take photos."

Emil, of Ogalala Lakota descent, dug in with them.

"We only did the drawers from about at eye-level to the floor, and even then we only got through about three rows," Nancy said. "I don't know how long it would take to see them all."

The trio spent most their day exploring things from the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho -- the groups from the central plains area.

"Horses, buffalo, lived in teepees," Craig said. "That's what we like."

"We've got a teepee," Nancy noted. "But we're lacking teepee poles. We bought it from a family that moved to New Jersey from the Rosebud reservation. The poles are in New Jersey."

Another use for brains

What is it about Native American beadwork that sparks in the Andersons?

Part of it is the history. Part of it is the art value.

"And it's ethnographic -- the art belongs to a select group of people," Nancy said.

The beadwork is intricate, but what really pulls the Andersons in are the stories.

"The Cheyenne had beading guilds, societies that taught little girls how to bead," Craig said. "And you didn't deviate."

That's why, he explained, the trained eye can see which group a pair of moccasins or a dress came from. While they were viewing the Smithsonian collection, the Andersons identified a few things that had been catalogued under the wrong group. The museum won't change it's cataloguing, Craig explained, but they may add a footnote if enough scholars agree.

"The women did the beadwork," Nancy said. "And it was very time consuming."

It would take one woman working all day to make one fully-beaded moccasin.

The process started with the animal hide, though. First the women would scrape it with an antler tool to break up the fibers and make it soft.

"These hides will never be rough," Nancy said. "They're always soft. They can be wet, and dried, and they'll soften again."

Before the beading, the hides were treated with a mix of mashed up animal brains, rubbed in like a dressing.

Porcupines versus glass

Studying the history gave the Andersons the knowledge the needed to determine which group a saddle blanket came from, or what period a pair of moccasins was made in.

Part of it is the beads' color. As dye-making technology changed, the blown-glass beads from Europe came in brighter and brighter hues.

"The Indians were always drawn to brighter objects," Nancy explained. "Before beads, they used porcupine quills for decoration, but they faded."

In 1800 glass beads were very rare and quills were used more.

"From 1830-1850, beads were more common, but still rare," Nancy said. "From 1860-1870 -- way cool."

Craig looked at her and laughed.

"Those are the pieces we're attracted to. The 1865-1875 range," he said. "It's referred to as the 'early reservation period.'"

Beads were more available and the families were no longer out chasing buffalo, so they had more time to bead, he explained. Their cultural ways of doing things were still strong.

"Later in the reservation period, the Native Americans became more acclimated to the white people," Craig said.

Along with colors, patterns of beadwork can date a piece.

"The early designs were squares, triangles, big blocks of color," Nancy said. "As they moved into the reservation period and they were no longer spending their time chasing buffalo, the blocks of color began to get appendages, more complicated designs."

When the see pieces, like the Smithsonian collection, the Andersons look at design elements, bead color and construction to date it and to sleuth out which tribe the beader who made it was from.

"The color choices tell me this is middle Sioux or Nakota," Nancy said, holding up a pair of moccasins.

For many groups, the numbers seven and four are very significant. Four for the four cardinal directions. Seven for those four directions, plus "Heaven," "earth" and "right here."

Cheyenne moccasins, Nancy added, usually have a design on the toe.

People behind the beads

The Andersons have gotten to hear about some of the techniques and stories first hand.

"The natural evolution is we started to have a lot of contact with the tribal people," Craig said. "We'd meet the artist, and they'd get to know that we were passionate about old things. Then they'd steer us to their older family members."

The Andersons have developed relationships with several Winnebago and Omaha families that live south of Sioux City.

"We've spent hours and hours talking with old ladies about their childhood," Craig said.

"We like to hear the stories," Nancy added.

One time, they had invited a 74-year-old woman to share a meal at their house. She regaled them with stories, like how at age 14 her father traded her for six horses to her first husband.

"And at the end of the meal," Craig recalled. "She looked at us and said, 'This is the first time I ever had a meal in a white family's house.'"

It's not unusual for the Andersons to be the only non-Indians at different events like memorial services. Most Native Americans, Nancy pointed out, have relationships with non-Indians.

"But they enjoy having white people go to their events and enjoy their culture, instead of non-Indian people forcing them into our culture," Nancy said.

Once, a family invited the Andersons to a feathering ceremony where a boy is given his first eagle feather.

"On the reservation, they have a saying: 'We're all related,'" Craig said.

Nancy nodded.

Life on the reservation today, she said, is the best of times and the worst of times.

"There's such family closeness, yet their living conditions are difficult," she said.

Another time, the Andersons were invited to join some traditional social games -- Craig said it was like an advanced "Button, button. Who's got the button."

"The drums were beating, the gourds were shaking, and it went on from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m." he said.

Living in the Midwest has given the Andersons an opening into the Native American world that others interested in the Indian beadwork don't have.

"Very few collectors have contact with the people themselves," Craig said. "In New York, in Chicago it's hard to meet and Indian."

First love

For both Nancy and Craig, their love for Native American artwork started early.

Nancy grew up near Chamberlain, S.D., near the Lower Brule and Crow Creek Indian Reservations, and always went to school with Native Americans.

"I was interested in beadwork enough that I taught myself how to do it in high school and in college," she said.

Craig said he could remember even before kindergarten begging his parents to take him to the shows.

"I wanted to buy some of the 'old stuff' before it was gone," he said.

Then he laughed.

"The product of too many Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger afternoon TV shows," he said.

When the Andersons first were married -- they met in college in South Dakota -- the Andersons hit up the Sioux City flea market held once a month in the Sioux City Auditorium at the time.

"Indian stuff would show up there," Craig said.

From there they started checking out antique shows and auctions, and subscribed to the American Indian Art magazine. Then they started going to the historic Indian art show in Santa Fe, N.M.

A contemporary Native American art show started in Sioux Falls in 1988, and by the next year, Craig joined the board that put on the show.

The Andersons' enthusiasm also brings them to Santa Fe once a year, to Winnebago and Omaha powwows, to places like the Buffalo Bill museum.

And they dig into topics with fellow beadwork-lovers on internet message boards. The field of Native American beadwork "scholars" is sizeable, but not huge, Craig said.

"When you go to those events, you see a lot of people you know," he said.

Easing the tension

The Andersons didn't deny that there is some tension from some Native Americans about non-Indians owning their cultural pieces.

"And there are some things that non-Indians shouldn't own, like their war bundles, ghost dance material and other religious items," Nancy said. "But some things, like this beaded cigar box that was a gift to a white teacher, were made to be gifts or sold."

Once Craig was looking at a collection, and the owner offered to sell him a few trunks of artifacts. When Craig looked closely, he realized some of the trunks had items with religious significance including a mummified hand.

"I don't want those, and I don't think you should have them either," Craig told the seller.

He thought that was the end of the story. But during a later visit to Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota to check out their artifact collection, the head priest told Craig a friend of his had been there and had donated a few trunks of artifacts.

One of the other priests had approached the head priest.

"I think there's something in our storage we shouldn't have," he said. "When I walked by the room, I could hear old time Indian singing."

When Craig realized what artifacts those were, he worked with the monastery to draft a letter to the tribe they originally belonged to in Wisconsin, saying if they wanted these items, they could have them back. They did.

The next fall, Craig flew up to Wisconsin to visit the tribe's cultural center. When he arrived, the head religious man came right up to him and started speaking Ojibwe. Then he stopped and spoke to Craig in English.

"I was telling the thunderbirds to look out for you," he said. "It was a wonderful thing you did. The elders thought all the bundles would be gone forever. But I had a dream they would fall into the hands of a person who would bring them back to us. That is you."

Home is where the art is

After a big day at the Smithsonian archives, Nancy and Craig reluctantly packed up their camera and closed the last drawer.

"We took about 100 photos, and that wasn't even 10 percent of what we looked at," Craig said.

They bid farewell to Emil, their friend of 25 years, and eventually headed back to Iowa.

Back to the heart of the central plains.

The plains that remember the footsteps of that mother, stepping lightly, carrying her baby on her back.

How the Native Americans got the beads:

The tiny, colored glass beads were actually blown glass from Europe. A glass-blower would blow some glass with chemicals mixed in for color. Then he would stretch the hot glass into a long, tiny tube. Individual beads were cut off and run through a tumbler to round out edges. Beads came to America as trade items. Many came up the Mississippi River with fur companies, who traded the Native Americans beads for pelts.

Spotting the fakes:

Like any part of the art world, there are fakes and imposters among Native American beadwork.

In their early years of chasing beads, the Andersons found out from a fellow enthusiast that some of the things they had picked up were fakes.

"There are people faking things, making them and selling them as old," Craig Anderson said. "At that point, we decided that if we are going to do this, we're going to become educated."

Now the Andersons look at colors, construction and design to sort the real McCoy from the imposters.

And then there's the matter of patina.

Translation: dirt.

Over time, artifacts collect a little dirt here and there, which helps date them.

"We look at the seams with a magnifying glass to see if there's the right amount of dirt there," Craig said.