hi today we're going to be discussing what
parfleches are and how they were made and how they were decorated
now when we think about what a parfleche is let's think about
how you and I travel around today if we go on a vacation we go for a day hike a
lot of times we'll grab ourselves a backpack or a knapsack or something like that
well during the times that the tribes were
frequenting here at Fort Union parfleche was the different types of
containers that they used for traveling with and basically what a parfleche
is are these different shaped containers that's made
out of rawhide they may or may not be decorated
like these examples that we see here now what type of
of rawhide is being used well on the northern plains where we're located
the buffalo would have been one of the more common ones although we have seen
examples of ones being made out of elk and even deer as well
but there would have been a lot of access to the buffalo
so what would happen keep in mind here at Fort Union
one of the mainstays of what keeps it going is the buffalo robe trade
so the hides that are coming off of cows or the female buffaloes that are about
two, three years in age those ones are
actually being used for lodge covers for their tipis
but it's also being used for the manufacturing of those robes that
they're going to brain-tan them to bring here to trade at fort union
so they were very well suited for that however the hides of the
bull buffalo were not they were a lot thicker they were a lot denser
so for something like these parfleche containers
they made a lot more sense there's there would have been an absolute pain to
to shave down thin enough in the making of those buffalo robes
so after a buffalo was hunted and the hide has been removed they would stake
them out and they would flesh them they'd use
different hand tools and this is off of a bull buffalo you can see here where
the stake holes are it's all folded up right now but this would have been
stretched out flat stakes in the ground and they would
have taken different fleshing tools that might have been used out of the leg
bone of an elk or the leg bone of a buffalo
that has been cut off at a bit of a 45 degree angle sometimes they would file
in some different teeth to help assist in the removal of all of the flesh that
would have been on that side of the hide
other tools that would be used also as time goes on the
bare...barrels of northwest trade guns that have ceased to function
we find a number of examples of those where the ends have been pounded flat
little tiny teeth chiseled into 'em and a bit of a
rawhide sleeve would go on the end with an arm strap
to assist in the removal and the scraping so that's where it starts
it starts in this hair on buffalo rawhide like this so after
that's done a lot of times they would have
different length sticks based upon the size of containers
that they're making are they going to be making a large box
like this? this has got Assiniboine style
decorations on it which is very appropriate
the Assiniboine is the reason why Fort Union get gets built here so we would
have seen a lot of this type of decoration
in the Fort Union area are so are you making yourself a box
or are you making one of these style of folders like this?
so they would have these different length sticks that they would use
to press in and you could see an indent mark on
the, the flesh side after it'd been fleshed and it got a little tacky
and they would start sketching out the rough designs
now they would use different earth pigments to be able to make these
different designs as you see here and they would begin to
trace them out oftentimes you could use twigs
or or pieces of branch that the end had kind of been frayed to use as a bit of a
paint brush for the application of the
the earth pigment other times too what they would do is they would take hide
glue which is some of what was removed in the
fleshing and scraping aspect of preparing the
hide that would be heated up and it would become glue-like and they
would actually pour the powdered earth pigments in there
and mix 'em up to like the consistency of oatmeal
and let them dry so you'd essentially have these coloring cookies versus color
crayons that you could use in the marking and decorating of your
parfleche so again this is in the Assiniboine
style and they weren't all direct decorated
the same way sometimes you see where on the back they're decorated as well
but as you see on the back of this one this is very simplistically
decorated on the back so after the whole thing had been decorated keep
in mind this is all laying flat then you'd end up
cutting it out so this kind of gives you an idea of how big this piece
actually is you end up with this giant piece of rawhide
that gets folded into an envelope the things would get put on the inside here
now what you can see as you remember from our example that has all that
buffalo hair on it still most of that has been removed here this
has been scraped but another common way of getting rid of
all of that hair is that they would actually pound it
with a stone so this would be laid out the decorated side up
and it would be pounded with a stone you could do it on the other side
as well and you would be striking it with the stone to remove the hair
although we see here that it's been scraped off with a scraper then you
would cut it and you'd begin to fold it it would
still need to be damp obviously depending on where on the buffalo it was
you would already have some holes in but then you would work in your
holes after you had it folded the size that you wanted to be
able to fasten it a lot of times what would happen with
this is a stick that had been burned they'd get a
hole started but then they'd take that burned stick that's got an ember
and they'd work it through there and it would kind of kind of cauterize it so to
speak but they would burn those holes through
pieces of small bar stock could also be used for that
so when it's completed you have this in this case
these will get referred to as folders it's basically a giant envelope
we put our things on the inside we've got some strapping in here to allow us
to put a little bit more go to close it down
we might have these leather straps made out of rawhide or they might be
brain-tanned buffalo leather as well that would get laced through
so that they could be fastened and then they would be tied off
now some tribes on the one edge would have a spot where a piece
of willow was on the inside with additional pieces of leather
strapping coming up so it could be used like a handle
we see that with the the some of the Blackfeet examples
that we have today that have survived it was not uncommon for a
a woman in the tribe to have two of these
size in particular because they rested well on either side of the
horse as they were traveling so in a nutshell that's what parfleche
is it's different containers that the tribes
were using made out of rawhide and a lot of times
they were decorated like this so you could tell which
tribe that they came from based upon the decoration that they had on top of them