A wamus is a type of
jacket worn in the United States. The term is applied to several different types of upper-body garment.
Early American history
One of the more consistent uses of wamus is to describe a fringed leather tunic that slips over the head.
For early
American pioneer families in the
Southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
, the buckskin (later, cloth) wamus was widely worn by young and pre-teen boys in the late 18th and very early 19th century. The wamus, if it opened down the front, was either laced shut or held closed with a belt, with dressier versions made from
elk skin.
[ If made from cloth, the wamus was dyed blue and trimmed with yellow fringe.][
As worn by the Lakota people, the wamus was a ceremonial tunic which was coloured to represent the type of person the wearer was, as well as painted with ]mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
designs.[ Traditionally, if a warrior had scalped his enemy, he was allowed to trim his wamus with human hair cut from the heads of mourning women in addition to the cut fringe.][
]
Later history
The wamus eventually came to describe a sleeved jacket or cardigan, typically with buttoned wristbands and a belt-like waistband, in which format, it was also sometimes called a roundabout.Amish
The Amish (; pdc, Amisch; german: link=no, Amische), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churc ...
men wear a jacket called a wamus, distinct from the 'mutze' traditionally worn for preaching.
See also
* Zouave jacket
References
{{reflist
Jackets
19th-century fashion
20th-century fashion
American clothing
Native American clothing