How Native American Nations Made Clothing: Hides, Fibers, Weaving and Trade

How did Native American nations make their clothing? In more ways than any one answer can cover. There are hundreds of distinct nations, and what they wore depended on where they lived, what grew or roamed there, and their own traditions. Choctaw people worked deer hides with a brain-and-smoke process. Tlingit and Haida weavers made Chilkat robes from mountain goat wool and cedar bark. Pueblo peoples grew cotton and wove it into blankets. Inuit seamstresses sewed caribou-skin parkas built for Arctic cold. This post sticks to what museums, tribal sources and universities document, names the nation every time, and tells you what we couldn't confirm.

A note on how we're doing this. We make modern clothing at Innocently Insane, and we're not experts on any nation's traditions. So we lean on museum, university and tribal sources, and where a source describes one nation or one family's practice, we say exactly that instead of saying “Native Americans did X.” The first mistake in this topic is treating hundreds of cultures as one. We won't do that.

Working hides: Choctaw deer hide

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's own publication Biskinik (December 2012) describes how traditional buckskin was made. The steps, in plain language:

1. Remove the hair. A hide was stretched on a frame or beam and scraped with a scraper. Hides could be soaked in wood ash and water first to loosen the hair.
2. Soak the dry hide, then wring it out damp.
3. Mash brains (or egg yolk or corn mush) with water into a warm mixture and soak or pound the hide in it.
4. Wring it and stretch it repeatedly as it dries, for hours. This is what keeps leather soft instead of drying stiff as a board.
5. Smoke it. The Choctaw source says smoking keeps the hide from stiffening when wet and discourages bugs. The fuel changes the color: corncobs give a yellowish tone (a Choctaw favorite), oak bark gives dark brown, sweet gum pods give bright yellow and alder bark gives reddish.

Two details from that same source bust popular ideas. It says Choctaw people did not chew hides to soften them, contrary to popular belief. (We did not verify that for other nations, so this is a Choctaw statement only.) And it says men have been the main hide-workers for about 100 years, with women probably doing more in the past. Roles changed over time and varied by nation, which is a theme in this story.

Is buckskin “not really tanned”?

You'll see claims that brain-tanned buckskin isn't technically tanned because it doesn't use tannins. That comes from Wikipedia, which cites a 1957 book and a 2004 how-to, and leather experts debate it. We couldn't find a museum or conservation source to settle it, so we're not taking a side.

Rawhide: Lakota parfleche

Rawhide is hide that's dried, not softened. The Hood Museum at Dartmouth describes a Lakota (Teton Sioux) parfleche from about 1900: the fur was scraped off and the hide stretched and dried in the sun, giving a stiff but durable material. A T-shaped piece was cut, painted flat with geometric designs, folded into an envelope and tied with rawhide thongs. The museum says women made rawhide containers. That's a container, not a garment, so it shows what rawhide is and who made it among the Lakota rather than how clothing was made. Plains and Apache moccasins used rawhide soles with softer uppers.

What animals? Named nations only

• Plains dresses: deer, elk or mountain sheep skin. Cree dresses used a single piece of finely worked elk skin, and buffalo robes were worn over them in the cold (Penn Museum Journal, 1921, a dated source by a non-Native author).
• Cheyenne (Tsistsistas): The Hood Museum describes a girl's dress from about 1915 to 1920 of native-tanned elk hide, two hides sewn together. Earlier Plains dresses preferred mountain sheep hide. After bighorn sheep were nearly wiped out by overhunting and disease from domestic animals, deer, elk, or wool and cotton cloth replaced it.
• Elk teeth: About 300 traditionally decorated a single dress, signaling the male relatives' hunting success. By 1920, bone imitations were used. A Crow statement recorded in 1992 describes the teeth as symbolizing “the prowess of the husband-provider.”
• Inuit: A Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian blog (2018) says caribou fur is the warmest natural material available in the north, sealskin is used for waterproof boots (kamiit), and gut parkas come from Alaska Native communities. Women made caribou parkas, boots, mitts and sleeping bags. The amauti, a woman's parka, has a back pouch (amaut) and broad shoulders so a mother can move the baby to the breast without taking it off.

Plant fibers

Not all clothing was animal-based.

• Pueblo peoples and the Bandelier region: The National Park Service says cotton was known by about A.D. 700. Yucca was the favored cordage fiber, and sandals were made of twilled yucca cord. Turkey feathers were wound and woven into warm blankets, using the same technique as rabbit-skin strips, with domesticated turkeys supplying the feathers. Pueblo men, especially at Hopi, make cotton blankets, belts and ceremonial clothing on traditional looms. That makes weaving men's work among the Pueblo, a reminder not to assume one gender role fits everyone.
• Dogbane: Sources document the fiber, not full garments, in most cases. Fibershed (a nonprofit) says Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples used dogbane fiber for clothing, string, rope, baskets, nets, belts and ceremonial regalia. The Oregon Encyclopedia describes dogbane processing among the Klamath, Modoc and Northern Paiute, for thread, nets, bags and bowstrings.
• Coast Salish: The Royal BC Museum says blankets were woven from nettle fiber with mountain goat wool and dog hair, including at least one piece (RBCM 9421) with stinging nettle and feathers.
• Secwepemc (Shuswap): A local newspaper report on a museum exhibit says Indian hemp bark and other bark were made into thread.
• Bast fibers generally: A Smithsonian-linked plant fiber reference lists basswood, slippery elm, stinging nettle, dogbane and milkweed as fibers (inner bark and stem) used for clothing, baskets, pouches, cords and mats, mostly in the north and east. It names no nations.

We looked for a solid museum source on cedar-bark clothing on the Northwest Coast and found only Wikipedia, citing Hilary Stewart's book Cedar: Tree of Life to the Northwest Coast Indians. It says men wore long cedar bark capes and women wore red cedar bark skirts and capes. That's a lead, not something we can confirm, so we're not building on it. Woven cedar hats are a better bet: native-languages.org says basket hats of sumac, cedar bark or spruce root were the most common hat type west of the Rockies.

Weaving: Chilkat and Navajo

Chilkat robes (Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian)

The Burke Museum at the University of Washington explains that mountain goat wool covers a cedar-bark core in the warps (the lengthwise threads), and the wefts are spun from plucked wool. The usual colors are ivory, lemon yellow and blue-green, in a twined weave. Tlingit and Haida women did all the preparing and weaving. Oral history credits the Coast Tsimshian with originating the style, which spread to the Tlingit and Haida, and to the Kwakwaka'wakw through marriage. The classic style was being woven by the mid to late 1820s. The Tlingit name is Naaxiin (“fringe about the body”), and the Tsimshian name is Gwis-halait (“dancing blanket”). Britannica for kids adds that a robe took about a year to make and signified wealth, and that designs were often drawn by men and woven by women. That's a respectable summary: women wove, from designs often drawn by men.

Navajo weaving is not as old as people think

This one surprises people. The Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami says the Navajo likely learned weaving from Pueblo peoples, and Churro sheep arrived in the region in 1598. So Navajo weaving in wool began after Spanish sheep arrived. Early blankets (before 1860) used handspun wool plus “raveled” wool, re-spun from imported trade cloth. Commercial yarn and dyes came in 1865 to 1895, and the museum says that by the early 1900s, Pendleton blankets were cutting into hand weaving. The page says the Navajo “may have reached” the Four Corners by the 14th century, which is uncertain. Weaving itself is very old in the Southwest: Pueblo cotton goes back about 1,300 years.

Moccasins

The Six Nations Polytechnic (an Indigenous institution) says Haudenosaunee moccasins were sewn from deer hide with sinew, decorated with dyed porcupine quill and later glass beads, trade cloth, felt and velvet, and that moccasins were common gifts to European officers. The site native-technology resource nativetech.org describes two basic types: soft-sole (upper and sole are one piece) in the Eastern Woodlands, and hard-sole (two or more pieces with a rawhide sole) on the Plains and in the desert. Those are different regions, so don't say moccasins had hard soles everywhere. Six Nations Poly also says gender clues, like wrap-around cuffs for women, are “not always reliable,” so we won't hand you rules for that.

For more on how quills and beads decorated clothing, see our post on quillwork and beadwork.

Thread: sinew

The Alutiiq Museum (Alaska) describes seamstresses taking sinew from whale, porpoise and seal tendons, separating it into fine strands by hand with their fingernails and winding it on a wooden spool. It was used to sew clothing (with awls, needles and thimbles), lash tools, tie armor slats and weave belts. Porpoise sinew was prized for fine embroidery. Among the Secwepemc, a museum exhibit reported deer back sinew as thread, with bone awls and needles from deer leg bone. The Penn Museum Journal (1921) says Plains peoples used sinew instead of fiber thread, and Haudenosaunee moccasins were sewn with deer sinew. We couldn't verify the details of how Plains or Woodlands peoples dried and pounded sinew, so we aren't describing it.

How trade and colonization changed clothing

• Trade goods got there early. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West says colored cloth, beads, iron and guns reached the Plains before Europeans did.
• Stroud cloth. The UBC Dictionary of Canadianisms says stroud was a heavy woollen cloth in several colors, used in the North for about three centuries for blankets, leggings, capotes and similar items. It's named after Stroud, Gloucestershire, and the Hudson's Bay Company introduced it to the fur trade, with the earliest citation from 1680. The entry covers “the North” (the Canadian fur trade), not a specific nation.
• Point blanket coats. The University of Wisconsin's Wisconsin 101 says Native American and French-Canadian trappers and traders first adapted wool point blankets into coats.
• Navajo yarn and Pendleton blankets (above).
• Plains animals vanish. Bighorn sheep were nearly eliminated, so wool and cotton cloth plus deer or elk hide replaced them. Bison hide covers were replaced by canvas after the 1880s, per the Hood Museum and the Center of the West.

Regalia is not a costume

One more thing, and it matters. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (Oregon) has an education lesson plan called “We Are Not a Costume.” It explains that regalia is “traditional clothing that is still worn by Native Americans today during ceremonies and celebrations,” carries spiritual meaning and expresses culture and identity. Beadwork often holds personal motifs reflecting the dancer's tribe, and family members often make it as gifts. Feathers receive particular respect. Some regalia varies by ceremony or dance, and some pieces are reserved for men or women. That's Grand Ronde's statement, not a rule for every nation, but the point is clear: call it regalia, not a costume.

Myths and stereotypes, graded

• “All Native Americans wore feather headdresses.” False. Native-languages.org says feather warbonnets were worn by about a dozen Plains tribes (Sioux, Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Plains Cree). Porcupine roaches and basket hats were more widespread.
• “Anyone could wear a warbonnet.” False. Smarthistory says each eagle feather marked a coup or brave deed, and wearers were proven male warriors or chiefs, usually at ceremonies. Women did not traditionally wear them.
• “Native women wore Indian princess headdresses.” False per native-languages.org, which says there were none in the US or Canada.
• “Hides were chewed to soften them.” False for the Choctaw, per the Choctaw Nation. Not verified for other nations.
• “Everything was fringed buckskin.” Not supported. Chilkat robes, Pueblo cotton and yucca, and Inuit caribou, sealskin and gut show a huge range. We found no strong source on why fringe was used or how common it was. Museums hold Blackfeet and Cheyenne dresses with fringe, and sources we found don't explain why, so we won't either.
• “Native clothing was primitive.” False. A Chilkat robe took about a year to make and signified wealth, and Pueblo weaving goes back about 1,300 years.
• “Navajo weaving is ancient.” Nuanced. Wool weaving began after Spanish sheep arrived in 1598. Weaving in the Southwest is very old.

Sources & further reading

• Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Biskinik (Dec 2012), Traditional buckskin: Choctaw hide working
• Hood Museum, Dartmouth, Lakota parfleche and Hood Museum, Cheyenne girl's dress
• Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Plains Indians FAQ: elk teeth, trade goods
• Penn Museum Journal (Farabee, 1921): Plains clothing (dated source)
• Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian blog (2018), Inuit women's survival skills
• National Park Service, Bandelier handbook: Pueblo cotton, yucca, turkey feather blankets
• Burke Museum, Unpacking the phrase Chilkat blanket and Kids Britannica, Chilkat weaving
• Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Navajo weaving
• Six Nations Polytechnic, Haudenosaunee arts: moccasins and nativetech.org, Moccasins
• Alutiiq Museum, sinew
• Oregon Encyclopedia, Dogbane (Indian hemp), Fibershed, dogbane and Royal BC Museum, Coast Salish weaving
• UBC Dictionary of Canadianisms, Stroud and Wisconsin 101, Point blanket coat
• Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, We Are Not a Costume lesson plan
• Smarthistory (2015), Feathered war bonnet and native-languages.org, Headdresses
• Wikipedia, Buckskin (leather) and Wikipedia, Cedar bark textile: general references, leads only