Beadwork

 I spent about a month each year in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks as well as Mt. Rushmore, I had good fortune to create relationships with accomplished craftspeople and traders of the Northern Plains.  I made regular trips to the reservations of the Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Sioux, and Shoshone-Bannock.  It was a giant leap from when I started buying beaded strips for dad.  When I was nine years old, I stood on a milk crate behind the counter and negotiated trades with Navajo bead workers.  The beaded strips were shipped to belt makers.  I never encountered better beadwork than what I found in the northern plains.  They are masters with split-stitch sewing where they don't run the needle  through  the leather, rather into the leather and out again.  The better items are made with native-tanned buckskin, buffalo, or elk skin.  The tanning process involves putting the hide on a stretcher, scraping the hair from the hide, then applying brain matter to the hide.   It is then made into a cone, placed over a smoking fire, and tanned.  If it is not put over a smoking fire, it will become a white hide.  A native-tanned hide has a pleasant smell and is soft and pliable.  Native-tanned clothing and moccasins can be hand-washed and put in a freezer for drying.  The hide-scrapping is shown in A Good Trade, as is history of the Gallup Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial.  The traditional method of quill work is to take a porcupine quill, cut off each end to relieve air pressure, soak the quill, chew on it to soften it, and then pull it through one's teeth to flatten it.  Not many bead workers have the skill for quill work.