Huron Wendat Quilled Hair-On Deerskin Knife Sheath + Green River Knife

Native American, Huron (Wendat). A knife sheath of hair-on deerskin, cut to a tapering blade form, with one edge bound in red trade wool cut to a scalloped, pinked border. Around the mouth runs a band of black cloth on a pale hide panel. It is worked in porcupine quills with paired foliate sprays inside zigzag borders, a botanical vocabulary favored by Huron-Wendat embroiderers. Moose-hair tassels, gathered with small blue and white glass beads, hang at the edges. The sheath holds a later butcher knife of the Green River trade pattern. The single-edged steel blade has a riveted beechwood handle with finger grooves, stamped "GREEN RIVER". The pairing joins indigenous hide and quill craft with the factory blade that carried the fur trade, and the two make good company. The Huron-Wendat, displaced from their Great Lakes homeland in the mid-17th century, resettled near Quebec City at Lorette, today Wendake. Through the 19th century the community became known for fine embroidery in dyed moose hair and porcupine quill on hide, birchbark, and trade cloth. Floral and foliate motifs, influenced in part by the needlework of French Ursuline nuns, became a hallmark of this work. Much of it was made for sale to travelers and collectors as well as for community use. The "Green River" name goes back to the John Russell Cutlery Company, founded in 1834 at the Green River Works in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Russell's plain, durable butcher and skinning knives were traded in great numbers across the North American frontier. They were so common that "up to Green River," a reference to the mark stamped near the hilt, became frontier slang for a job done thoroughly. The pattern stayed in production long after the fur-trade era, and knives bearing the name are still made today. For a comparable example, please see British Museum, Am.2596. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 206014

Estimate:£521.99

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