The Suitcase by Ida Claymore Essay

Correspondingly, the Suitcase by Ida Claymore contains different images that tell a story about the Native American tribe as well as events that were occurring around the 19th century in which it was made. It presented beaded pictographs that were produced by Plains Native American women in the late 19th and early 20th century, this was an extension of the pictographs that had been drawn by men for many generations. (CITE) Men's pictographs usually recorded stories of battles, visionary experiences, hunting, and courting. Women mostly beaded geometric designs, but the rare object with pictographs usually depicted domestic scenes and courting. (CITE) The very few beaded suitcases or satchels in existence were produced by the Lakota tribe. [add a sentence to tie in the significance of these symbols/pictographs]
As it is shown, the beaded signature on the top right is the artist's name Ida Claymore. Ida Claymore incorporated conventions of painted and drawn works to illustrate the story depicted on the suitcase. Furthermore, the camp scene, featuring a tipi and a rack that holds multiple decorated hides, implies that this event took place in a traditional camp setting which is a representation of their home. Claymore drew on Plains artistic conventions to decorate the suitcase. One side of the case presents a scene of courtship in two phases. The top half shows the suitor in blue, wearing a distinctive pipe bag, presenting a herd of horses to his prospective wife, who stands in a fine red robe beside a row of cooking kettles. This shows the importance of the horses for the Native American culture in the late 19th century. When an explorer came from Spain, he brought horses with him which the Native Americans found enchanting and saw them as spiritual objects. http//www.indians.org/articles/wildhorses.html
The second part of the story appears in the bottom half, as a girl in blue leads a gift horse, bearing the mans pipe bag, to the bride in her camp. The woman now stands beside a rack laden with her handiwork quilled hides, pipe bags, and beaded blankets showing the importance of the bags during this time period. The bags were made differently because of the new materials the Native Americans were exposed to. This is one of the many changes the Native Americans experienced with the way they did certain things from their culture.
The other side of the suitcase features two cowboys roping cattle. Claymore left no record of the connection she had in mind between the two sides of the suitcase, but it seems plausible that she was showing the first scene to illustrate the traditional ways alive in her memory, as well as what she has learned from her family members. The second side was seen to reflect the realities of contemporary life on the reservation. This beaded suitcase illustrates an update to this tradition, in which Ida Claymore applied beads to deer hide and then attached the hide to a commercially made leather and metal suitcase. She showed the modernized