Victor L. Coutee
Native American History
Jennifer Andrella
Saturday, June 1, 2024
Parfleche Bag- Weasel Fat from the Kainai Tribe · Four Views (jenniferandrella.com)
The Four Views project delved into facts and details based on the Parfleche bag, but this blog post will be going into more detail on the history surrounding the Parfleche bag.
Parfleche materials were introduced during the Fur Trade as its name originated from the French words “Parer”, meaning “to defend or turn away”, and “fleche”, meaning “arrow”; together meaning “shields made out of rawhide”. The invention of Parfleche bags and containers came from Plains Indians after the introduction of ‘Plains Horse Culture’ when horses were in high demand for trading goods, especially during the fur trade, according to the Gilcrease Museum’s website.
Plains Horse Culture was invented because of the need for horses to benefit the Plains Indian ways of living. This focused on trading of goods and materials, transporting people including the old and the sick, and was even used for courtship, according to the American Museum of Natural History’s website.
Parfleche bags were typically made of one large sheet of sun-dried rawhide where it would be smoothed out to get rid of any fur and even out the texture of the skin. After the drying and smoothening process, prickly pear juice would be applied as a protection before the process of painting. The paints were usually made from a variety of resources from around the world. In particular: Blackfoot people would typically use fungi, such as Echinodontium tinctorium, several types of plants, and clay.
Parfleche bags were typically painted with colors like red, blue, green, and black in a geometric design. It has also been said that previous painted designs were made to look like, and have the use of, maps. Later versions of the bag’s design were meant to resemble mountains and rivers. Personally, the designs may have not changed much and the Parfleche bags we now see today were still used as a type of makeshift map of the surrounding lands. However, the map like/geometric designs of the bag still stayed similar regardless of what tribe the bag came from which further solidifies the potential use for the painted designs on each bag.
The main reason why the designs of Parfleche bags have stayed the same throughout the years is due to generational practice and teaching. Many elders have taught the younger of the generations how to make and create parfleche bags the same way that they have been made for the past few hundred years. This teaching of the making and designing of parfleche bags will likely still be taught to more generations to come.
Some iterations of the parfleche bag had small tassel-like strands as part of its design. Through my research, I have not found anything about the purpose of the small leathery tassels, but I can infer that they were likely made out of small leftover pieces of dried rawhide that had been made to be stringy. This seems to possibly have great benefits of possibly holding in items since it’s so strong and leathery.
so that storable objects, like pemmican which is a mixture of dried berries and meats, would be prevented from flying out during transport so that it could be successfully traded or taken home.
Not only did the painted designs of each parfleche bag have a very beneficial effect on the purpose, but the structure as well, given that they were meant to be carried upon a horse’s back and transported.
In conclusion: parfleche bags are a small part of one of many integral times of Native American history that was used for transportation and mapping out lands in a safe fashion for the items that were being held. This developed from the fury trades as well as the discovery of plains horse culture which both had high demand for horses, as a means of transportation, and trading of materials, like the rawhide used to create the parfleche bag.