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Pitt Rivers Museum

1886.21.23.1

Large deerskin bow case and quiver, fringed, covered in red ?felt and beaded with 'tornado' design. For associated arrows see [1886.21.23 .2 - .12] [BS [OPS move] 13/9/2017]


1886.21.23.1

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

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Collection type
Object
Description
Large deerskin bow case and quiver, fringed, covered in red ?felt and beaded with 'tornado' design. For associated arrows see [1886.21.23 .2 - .12] [BS [OPS move] 13/9/2017]
Long description
Large deerskin bow case and quiver. The bow case is sub rectangular with the closed end tapering and terminating in cut hide fringes and a band of blue and white beads divided by a strip of red felt. At the open end there is cut hide fringe and white beading and a triangular length of hide covered in red felt and beading in the ?'tornado' design. The quiver is attached on one side and is much longer and narrower than the bow case, also with fringing. There is a hide shoulder strap which loops along one side and both ends, fringed and beaded, emerge at the other. [BS [OPS move] 13/9/2017]
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1865?, uncertain
Date collected
By 1865?
Acquisition information
Transferred: 1886, uncertain
Materials and processes
Material Deer Skin Animal, Material Bead, Material Pigment, Material Felt Wool Textile Animal, Process Beadwork, Process Stitched, Process Dyed, Process Cutwork
Dimensions
Width: max 430 mm, Depth: max 85 mm, Length: max 1450 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1886.21.23.1 Other numbers: Pope No. 5
Research and responses

Seen by Neil Gilbert, 1998, who has an amateur interest in Native American material. He thinks this quiver might have been made pre-1855 as it has distinctive blue and white 'pony beads' on it which were used prior to 1855.

For an account of the Charles A. Pope Collection, see Speaking for Themselves: The Pope Collection of Native American Artifacts in the Pitt Rivers Museum, by Lindsey Richardson (University of Oxford: M.Sc. dissertation in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, 2001); copy in RDF (Collectors: Pope). [JC 6 1 2004]

Roland Bohr, a PhD student from University of Manitoba, Canada, examined and sketched this object in detail in March 2004. Bohr was interested in the "tornado" beadwork design and sent the Museum illustrations of Southern Plains quivers and bowcases with a similar design, although with the protrusion of the circle pointing downwards rather than upwards as it does in this object. The illustrations are photocopies of page 183 of Steve Allely and Jim Hamm, Encyclopedia of Native American Bows, Arrows & Quivers, Volume 3, Plains and Southwest, Bois d'Arc Press, 2002 and pages 297-328 of Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Plains Indian Raiders, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1968. (The photocopies of these pages and a copy of Bohr's sketch and notes are in the related documents file). [ZM 19/7/2005]

Search terms: Archery Weapon, Quiver, Bow Case