Getting Dressed | Making a Powhatan Feather Mantle
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- čas přidán 7. 05. 2021
- In May we celebrate Indigenous Arts Day at Jamestown Settlement, so we asked Roger, one of our interpreters and an artist, to talk about how he has been making feather mantles.
Here at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation we have staff from different and diverse backgrounds. Indigenous people are from all over the continent and do not all look the same. Our Indigenous staff pour time, energy, and passion into telling the story of the Powhatan people in Tsenacommacah and it can be hurtful when people assume their heritage based on their appearance. We expect staff and visitors alike to treat one another with respect regarding their culture and histories, so please keep this in mind when commenting. Thank you and enjoy the video!
Enjoyed hearing you in person during my visit today.
Awesome! Thank you for sharing.
Great work and another awesome educational video.
Thanks for sharing this. I'm making one now.😊
You’re welcome 😊
@@JYFMuseums What are you using for thread? I'm working with faux sinew, because the cost of actual sinew is prohibitive.
Linen thread was used on this project.
this is beautiful. And the net is very appealing; the thought of making the cordage with nettles or meadowsweet comes to mind, or even iris. And this looks totally different from the feather mantle I just saw an image of today, which is twined, feathers twined into the cordage, and uses very different feathers parts -- a different approach. I can imagine there are diverse forms of feather mantles or cloaks, not to mention blankets. This version, retaining, as you say, the lay of the feathers, looks quite regal. I was reading that domesticated ( a sanitized term for factory farmed) turkeys are bred to have whitish feathers, so that "the pin feathers won't show up on the carcasses". :( This tradition of cloaks and mantles one can imagine and sense yields a feather that retains a respect for the bird.
I'd like to know more about the references you mention, what the sources are...I am familiar with the net base noted by James Adair, but the English accounts and the Mallard duck wing feathers is very interesting. I enjoyed your video. My family goes back to James Town. Cheers.
Thank you. Here are a few quotes for you.
From William Strachey’s The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, “…likewise her mayd fetcht her a mantell, which they call puttawus, which is like a side cloake, made of blew feathers, so arteficyally and thick sowed togither, that it seemed like a deepe purple satten, and is very smooth and sleeke ;…”
Strachey makes a second reference to blue feathers, though not on a mantel when he writes, “…They adorne themselves most with copper beades and paintings. Of the men, there be some whoe will paint their bodyes black, and some yellowe, and being oyled over, they will sticke therein the soft downe of sundry couloured birdes of blew birds, white herne shewes, and the feathers of the carnation birde, which they call Ashshawcutteis, as if so many variety of laces were stitched to their skinns, which makes a wondrous shew ; then, being angry and prepared to fight, paint and crosse their foreheadds, cheekes, and the right side of their heades diversly, either with terra sigillata or with their roote pochone...”
He’ll also reference netting being used for feather mantels, “They have netts for fishing, for the quantity as formerly brayed and mashed as our's, and these are made of barkes of certaine trees, deare synewes, for a kynd of grasse, which they call pemmenaw, of which their women, betweene their hands and thighes, spin a thredd very even and redily, and this threed serveth for many uses, as about their howsing, their mantells of feathers and their trowses, and they also with yt make lynes for angles.”
John Smith wrote in his General History of Virginia, New England, and the Somer Isles, “We have seene some use mantels made of Turky feathers, so prettily wrought & woven with threads that nothing could be discerned but the feathers. That was exceeding warme and very handsome.”
Shiyo! I would be interested to see an instructional or in depth video on his hair roach. Sgi🙏
Hi! I have a question: Are you able to make one, or is there a guide, as to how to do the sewing-on of feathers? I am wanting to recreate a Chinese feather cloak, but no surviving examples exist; only written accounts. Your video is the best I've been able to find, but being in Oklahoma, I'm unable to come visit the museum to see it for myself. Any help appreciated 💙
If you are in Oklahoma, the best advice we'd suggest is visiting one of the tribal museums in Tahlequah. Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw all do feather work as well and may be the best way to see the work up close.
Very cool,I want to make a feather Cloak like the Maori from NZ,but I was going to cheat by sowing feathers onto a old sheet by hand and then glueing them a little, and I was going to just use peacock feathers because they a pest around here same with turkeys ,but I'm not a fan of turkey's but just from my little research I'm starting to see how great and important of a bird it actually is......I am also starting to see that feature cloaks and blankets is a craft that may have traveled round the world in ancient times being adapted to local plants and bird's as well as stiles or culture
A lot of this series seems similar to haudenosaunee writings I haven't seen a nice series about haudenosaunee like this one but the docs on them seem similar.
Is there any article that explains FEATHER MANTLE. I already knew, it is originated in Buddhism. But the real question is who wears them. But based in some mythology it is only worn by devine beings like gods, however I don't have source that prove it hahaha.
Thank you for your question! We can't speak to the use of feather mantles in Buddhist culture, but let us try to dig a little more into the topic of feather mantles in Indigenous society in the Tidewater region of the United States (North Carolina and Virginia, mostly.)
Feather mantles seem to have been worn by men and women of higher status. Higher status in this context could mean they are political leaders, wealthy* individuals or families, or maybe religious figures. (*Wealth at this time would not be based on currency, but more closely tied to a man's ability to hunt and fight and a woman's ability to farm, since these skills would show competence to leadership and allow the family to accumulate tradeable and luxury goods.)
What sources speak to this claim?
Speaking to political leaders and wealthy individuals/families, an English colonist, William Strachey, writes about meeting the un-named wife of a Quiyoughcohanock leader named Pipisco, saying: "I was once early at her house (it being summer time) when she was laid without doors under the shadow of a broad-leaved tree, upon a pallet of osiers, spread over with four or five fine grey mats, herself covered with a fair white dressed dear skin or two; and when she rose, she had a maid who fetched her a frontal of white corral, and pendants of great but imperfect colored and worse drilled pearls, which she put into her ears, and a chain, with long links of copper, which they call Tapoantaminais, and which came twice or thrice about her neck. . . . Likewise her maid fetched her a mantel which they call puttawus, which is like a small cloak, made of blue feathers so artificially and thick sowed together that it seemed like a deep purple sateen, and is very smooth and sleek; and after she brought her water for her hands, and then a branch or two of fresh green ashen leaves, as for a towel to dry them." [Spelling has been adapted for readability.] Mantles made out of animal skins would have also been work by political leaders and wealthy individuals/families, such as "Powhatan's Mantle" pictured here: www.ashmolean.org/powhatans-mantle
Speaking to religious figures, English colonist Thomas Hariot wrote about priests wearing a short cloak "made of fine hare skins, quilted.” [Spelling has been adapted for readability.] This is a mantle made from hares and not feathers, but still speaks to the use of mantles as a status item, and feathers often hold religious significance in Indigenous society, so the use of feathers in the ornamentation of priests was common. English colonist, John White, also painted a Secotan priest wearing this garment, which can be viewed here: www.virtualjamestown.org/images/white_debry_html/plate41.html
If you have general questions about the historical use feather mantles, please check out these links:
www.woodlandindianedu.com/feathermantlecloakcape.html
delawaretribe.org/wp-content/uploads/LenapeFeatherCape.pdf
www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/feathers-in-southeast-american-indian-ceremonialism/
I also recommend reading about the turkey feather mantle made by Mollie Adams of the Upper Mattaponi, a group once part of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom: www.jyfmuseums.org/events/special-exhibits/past-special-exhibits/focused-a-century-of-virginia-indian-resilience
If this did not answer your question or you have other questions, please let us know!
I love the purpose of the video but as an Algonquin women I'm wondering why you both are dressed in Algonquin regalia instead of simply hiring Algonquin people as models to recreate our Indigenous history.
You've copy/pasted this same comment on every video on their indigenous playlist. Did you visit the museum and ask every single one of their staff what their ethnicity is? How do you know some of these folks aren't Algonquin? I understand your concern, but these folks are showing some serious respect to this subject matter and have put the work in to make sure they're doing the indigenous story justice. I haven't noticed anyone asking on any of the Anglocentric videos whether or not the historians are of english descent. It seems to me that the job should be done by someone who is passionate and caring about the subject matter, regardless of who they are.