This straight coat with stand-up collar is reminiscent of a military garment that may have served the Indian artisan as a model. The decoration is distinctly aboriginal, consisting of black and red painted bands around the sleeves, and elaborate porcupine quillwork in four different techniques. Fine loom-woven quillwork created the complex epaulettes; one-quill-band sewing was utilized for the quillwork of the roundels on front and back; curvilinear patterns are in simple line sewing; and quill-wrapping decorates the fringes, which are separated by yellow pony beads. The long fringes attached to the roundels on the back terminate into worn tin cones which formerly held red-dyed deer hair tassels.

Coats of this type are well-known; they range from the long northern Cree coats of the 1780s to the tailored Red River coats of the 1830s. This example is of an intermediate type: the painted sleeves are reminiscent of the early northern coats, whereas the coat's cut and elaborate quillwork is more typical of the later Red River fashion. As such, this coat suggests a Manitoba Ojibwa origin of the 1820s.

However, the decoration of this coat includes some definitely unique features. Coming down from the collar on the back is a column of linear diamonds, and double-curved triangles in the same quillwork technique decorate the coat's bottom edge. These designs and their technique strongly suggest influence from the Iroquois or eastern Great Lakes. It is well-known that Indians from these eastern regions, employed by the fur trade, found their way into the Canadian Northwest, where they intermarried with the local native population. Thus this coat illustrates the impact of the fur trade on the native arts, and the coat's pristine condition suggests that it was made as a present for a trader. The pre-1986 history of this coat is unknown, though its discovery in an English family collection supports its origin from British North America in the earliest years of the 19th century.

Drs. T.J. Brasser
Peterborough, Ontario
December 15, 2008

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