Turquoise has been in use for over 6,000 years worldwide. Native people in the Southwest have used turquoise for well over 2,000 years for trade, a spiritual connection and to adorn jewelry.
Continue reading Turquoise: How do I tell real from manufactured
Sweetgrass, Hierochloe Odorata, is a beautiful sacred plant growing in the northern half of the U.S., up to the arctic circle. Sometimes called Buffalo Grass or Vanilla Grass, it spreads by underground rhizomes and prefers damp lowland areas. Because of its connection to water and its sweet smell it is considered feminine. People use it for ceremonies and healing along with sage and cedar. Continue reading Sweetgrass
If there is a universal child’s toy, it may well be a doll. Whether hastily made from scrap material at hand, or painstakingly made to exacting detail, dolls “speak” to our humanity. At first glance, dolls are simple play-things… suffering the ravages of many other mere “toys”. However, there are many other reasons dolls are created and decorated for children. Dolls may also be used to teach children important cultural and educational lessons in dress, hair style, adornment and dexterity.
Some dolls are created for specific purposes or occasions. Others are made with whimsy and artistic license. There are no limits to the variety of dolls. This author is particularly interested in beadwork as a decorative medium. By making a basic cloth doll body, there are unlimited ways to construct and decorate these miniature personalities. Continue reading Hand Made Dolls
The Porcupine Roach is one of the most beautiful and practical headpieces of the North American Indian. Many different men’s dance styles use porcupine roaches. The following directions will show you how to make a long porcupine roach. You can also use the same technique to make a shorter or a round porcupine roach.
Materials Needed:
Native Americans have traded Cowrie shells amongst themselves for hundreds of years. They use these shells to decorate their clothing and to make jewelry. The European traders brought glass beads to trade with the Native Americans. These beads were eagerly adopted by Natives and also used them to create jewelry. Our Cowrie shell necklace is a very traditional, yet simple necklace to make, so you can show off your new necklace in no time at all! Continue reading How to make a Cowrie Shell Necklace
The Hairpipe Breastplate has historically been associated with the Comanche. They were first created in the mid 19th century and were adopted by many other tribes of the Great Plains. The term “Hairpipe” is used to describe the long, slim, hollow beads made from animal bone that are used to make Breastplates.
How to make a Plains Style Breastplate – 36 rows long:
You can make a longer Breastplate by using more Hairpipe and longer Breastplate strips
The Wandering Bull Native American Trading Shop instructions will show you how to make a Peyote Stitch Key Ring. You can also use these instructions to decorate fan handles, pens, awl cases, dance sticks and more with Peyote Stitch! Continue reading Peyote Stitch Key Ring Instructions
Leather is a durable and flexible material created by tanning animal skins. Tanning animal skins into leather is a process which alters the protein structure of the animal’s skin. Tanning can be performed by several different methods. At The Wandering Bull Native American Trading Post you will find several different leather types to choose from. Continue reading Leather Types
Eastern Woodlands Native American Clothing is both functional and decorative. During the pre-contact period, Eastern Native American clothing was made from animal leather and furs. When European trade goods arrived in Northeastern North America, the Native Americans eagerly adopted wool, cotton, linen, ribbons and beads to use for their own clothing. But while they began to use different materials, their clothing style remained essentially unchanged to allow them to move freely in their Woodland environment.
Deerskin lacing is great for Native American craft-making. You can use it for stringing and tying jewelry (chokers, bracelets and more), garment lacing, making fringe, braiding a headband, or wrapping a metal ring to make a dream catcher. These are just a few examples of uses for soft deerskin leather lace. Here at The Wandering Bull, LLC we cut our own Top Grain Deerskin into Continue reading Deerskin Lacing & Lace Maker Tool
Early American Men’s Shirts served a purpose. It was made in a pullover style with one button at the neck. They were worn as an undergarment to absorb bodily dirt and oil at a time when laundering clothes and washing the body were not a frequent occurrence. The shirt was knee length which was necessary because the shirt was also used as a night shirt and was the only form of underwear worn by most men.
Native American beadwork, like quill work before it, is a decorative art form. Almost as soon as seed beads were available, native women invented two techniques for using them: loom beading and applique embroidery. Those two techniques are still in use today. Loom-beading and a form of single-needle weaving (peyote beading) are not adaptations of techniques known to European or other cultures – they are native inventions. Continue reading Bead Looms – History and Usage
The variety of beads introduced to North America is vast. Small glass beads are often known as Seed Beads. Italy was one of the most prolific manufacturers of these small glass beads. Most of these beads were made using the “drawn” method. A glass blower would blow a bubble in a molten blob of glass. Other workers, often young boys, would grasp the soft glass bubble and pull it into a long thin tube. The air bubble would create the hole going the length of the tube. Some references state that these tubes could be up to 150 feet long. The tube would be broken into small pieces after it cooled. Finally, the pieces were reheated, and tumbled to smooth the edges. Finished beads were sorted by size. Continue reading Seed Beads in North America
The Wandering Bull was started by Paul and Harriett Bullock with a card table at powwows around 1969. With six children, four sets of dance bustles in a VW bus, and a love for our culture, we never stopped growing. As the family became more involved in powwows, the kids encouraged us to develop a small part time business. These sales enabled us to attend powwows and pay for gasoline, food etc. Although everything was informal, these were the beginnings of The Wandering Bull. Continue reading Wandering Bull Native American Craft Store
The first European explorers and colonists gave Native Americans glass and ceramic beads as gifts and used beads for trade with them. Native Americans had made bone, shell, and stone beads long before the Europeans arrived in North America, and continued to do so. However, European glass beads, mostly from Venice, some from Holland and, later, from Poland and Czechoslovakia, became popular and sought after by Native Americans. Europeans realized early on that beads were important to Native Americans and corporations such as the Hudson Bay Trading Company developed lucrative bead-trading markets with them. The Hudson Bay Trading Company was an organized group of explorers who ventured into the North American continent for trade expeditions during the 19th century. Continue reading Native American Trade Beads History
A Little Turkey Feathers HistoryWhen Europeans first encountered turkeys in America, they incorrectly identified the birds as a type of guinea fowl (birds which were thought to typically come from the country of Turkey.) The name of the North American bird then became “turkey fowl”, which was then shortened to turkey. Wild turkey is native to North American in an area ranging from Northern Mexico to the Eastern United States. The wild turkey nearly disappeared in the early 1900s due to over hunting and clearing for farmland. Continue reading Turkey Feathers History
Traditionally, the Ojibwe construct dream catchers or “dreamcatchers” by stringing sinew strands in a web around a small round or tear-shaped frame of willow. In a way, it is roughly similar to their method for making snowshoe webbing. The resulting dream catcher, hung above the bed, is used as a charm to protect sleeping people, usually children, from nightmares. Continue reading Dream Catchers
Wampum beads include the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell, a sea snail with a spiral shape; and the white and purple beads made from the quahog, or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. Quahogs are found in the waters from Cape Cod south to New York, with a great abundance in Long Island Sound. Wampum were used by the northeastern Native Americans as a form of gift exchange. European traders and politicians, using beads and trinkets, often exploited gift exchange to gain Native American favor or territory. With the scarcity of metal coins in New England, Wampum quickly evolved into a formal currency after European/Native contact, its production greatly facilitated by slender European metal drill bits. Wampum was mass produced in coastal southern New England. The Narragansetts and Pequots monopolized the manufacture and exchange of wampum in this area. Continue reading Wampum Beads History
