Native American Indian Beadwork

Ever since a young age I have been fascinated with the Native American art work that I have seen both in person and online. After traveling out west in Arizona and California and seeing some of the historic artwork that the Native Americans produced years ago, really gave me a sense on the traditions and time that went into each and every piece. One of the more particular pieces of work I am going to focus on is Native American Indian Beadwork. Since the beginning of time Native American Indians decorated their garments with colorful beaded designs that would represent a particular aspect of their culture or belief. They would use materials such as bone, shell, or dried berries to craft these beads into necklaces or decorations for the fringes …show more content…
For many years after beads were introduced to the Indians, sinew was used in place of needles and thread for beadwork. Sinew is an extremely strong material that comes from shredded fibers of animal tendons, that would also be used to create weapons like arrows and the bows cord. It was common for Native Americans to use long sinew found along the backbone of a buffalo or deer. After the sinew is dried, it is split into very fine threadlike strands. Next it was soaked to make it durable. Once that was completed, they would begin twisting it at the end to make a point. Indian women would then start to put beads on and continue to make whatever pattern was desired. The first type of beadwork that the Native American Indians would use was referred to as the spot stich. This was one of the earliest methods of applying the beads. By using this method Indian women were able to curve their design making it into designs like flowers or leaves by doing a normal sewing stich repeated at regular intervals. The next type of beadwork that was used is the lazy stich. The western Indians most often used the lazy Stich. It lends itself to straight sided, or geometric, designs, and is most often seen on fully beaded vests and pipe bags and on top of women’s dresses. After the Indians began to obtain cloth from traders, they were also able to get fine bead needles and much of the beadwork was done on cloth from then on out. The final type of beadwork is called loom weaving. The earliest bead loom, which was used by the Ojibway women, was a bow-shaped ash branch. They would fasten a doubled over piece of birch bark to each end. This would create a row of holes made in these pieces that they threaded through the loom. When they worked with sinew, they wove in a particular way that the thread would pass through the beads and the other would pass