Who Wore This Dress?

The personal identity of the woman who wore this beautiful dress has been lost in time. But the dress itself tells us some things about her. The style and design indicates that she was probably a Sioux or Cheyenne woman who lived in the Central Plains region, where trade and buffalo hunting formed the nineteenth-century economy. The ancient side-fold pattern of the dress, the quillwork, and the use of the dress in dancing tell us that she was active in traditional cultural life. At the same time, the wealth in rare and exotic trade goods sewn to the dress reveal that she was somehow connected to foreign people and far-flung places.

She was probably someone like Sakakawea (Sacajawea), the young Shoshone woman who traveled to the Pacific Coast with the Lewis and Clark party, or like Tchon-su-mons-ka (Sand Bar), a young Lakota Sioux woman who married the American fur trader François Chardon.