A parfleche is a Native American rawhide container that is embellished by painting, incising, or both. Envelope-shaped parfleches have historically been used to contain items such household tools or foods, such as dried meat or

pemmican Pemmican (also pemican in older sources) is a mixture of tallow, dried meat, and sometimes dried berries. A calorie-rich food, it can be used as a key component in prepared meals or eaten raw. Historically, it was an important part of indigenou ...

. They were commonly made in pairs and hung from saddles. Their designs may have once served as maps.Goes In Center, Jhon (Oglala Lakota),
Native American and First Nations' GIS
for ''Native Geography 2000'' In contemporary usage, they may carry social, spiritual, and symbolic meaning, or be part of dance or parade regalia. The bags are usually decorated with a distinctive style of graphic artwork, often symbolizing landscape features such as rivers and mountains. Historically women were the main creators of parfleches, first painting stretched-out raw hides, then shaping them into their final form. In the 21st century, both women and men make them.

Overview

The increased mobility among the post-contact

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of ...

horse culture A horse culture is a tribal group or community whose day-to-day life revolves around the herding and breeding of horses. Beginning with the domestication of the horse on the steppes of Eurasia, the horse transformed each society that adopted it ...

required that essential goods such as preserved foods (including

), clothing, medicines, and ceremonial items be transported efficiently in lightweight and weatherproof packaging. While the most common form of the parfleche was the folded envelope or flat wallet, they were also constructed as laced flat cases, cylinders, and trunks. The production of parfleche bags declined drastically when mercenaries hired by the US federal government slaughtered the buffalo herds to the brink of extinction. The federal government forced Indigenous peoples to relocate onto government-partitioned reservations. While less visible to the colonists who were collecting them for museums, some tribes, particularly the

Nez Perce The Nez Percé (; autonym in Nez Perce language: , meaning "we, the people") are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who are presumed to have lived on the Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest region for at least 11,500 years.Ames, K ...

were able to continue hunting and making parfleches throughout the 20th century. The Niisitapi and Lakota people continue to produce parfleches today.

Etymology

The name "parfleche" was initially used by French

fur traders The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the most ...

in the region, and derives from the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in N ...

''parer'' meaning "to parry" or "to defend", and ''flèche'' meaning "arrow". "Parfleche" was also used to describe tough rawhide shields, but later used primarily for these decorated rawhide containers. Different Indigenous peoples have their own names for these versatile packages, including ''ho'sēō'o'' (

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enr ...

), ''bishkisché'' ( Apsáalooke) and ''ho'úwoonó3'' ( Hinono'eino).

Construction

Historically parfleches were almost exclusively made by women. Creation began with “fleshing”, or the removal of the hide from animals such as elk, deer, and most commonly buffalo. Craftswomen employed

bone tool In archaeology, a bone tool is a tool created from bone. A bone tool can conceivably be created from almost any bone, and in a variety of methods. Bone tools have been documented from the advent of ''Homo sapiens'' and are also known from ''Hom ...

s fashioned as chisels for fleshing. The hide was stretched by staking it above the ground, and scraped to an even thickness. A glutinous wash (prepared of prickly pear cactus juice or

animal glue Animal glue is an adhesive that is created by prolonged boiling of animal connective tissue in a process called rendering. In addition to being used as an adhesive it is used for coating and sizing, in decorative composition ornaments, and as a ...

) was applied for protection before the moist hide was painted. Until the 1890s, natural paints were overwhelmingly used, formed using substances such as

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ...

for black,

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular micr ...

for green, and yellow

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

for red. Because artists had a limited amount of time to paint the parfleche design, they had to work with boldness and expertise as revisions were not possible. Once the paint was dry, the craftswomen de-haired the opposite side of the hide using a “stoning” method, and cut the outline of the parfleche using a

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start ...

or metal knife. Lastly, the container was folded into its chosen shape and holes were cut or burned to insert ties and laces.

Craftswomen's guilds

Historically, the Native women with the most talent in producing parfleches, the painted designs, and similar items, have held respected positions in their communities. These women historically formed local

guild A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradesmen belonging to a professional association. They sometim ...

s, choosing elders to oversee the preservation, practice and teaching of these skills to their proteges. The guilds can also be credited with the consistency in parfleche design across multiple nations, as they preserve and pass down the customary designs, symbolism, meanings, and techniques. While parfleches have been stolen, collected, and admired as art pieces, their 19th-century creators (renowned in their own communities during their own times) have remained largely unknown to colonial anthropologists, collectors, and museum curators, and thus their names tend not to be known.

References

External links