Parfleche Bag with Fringe

Parfleche Bag with Fringe

Add this brightly painted Parfleche Bag with Fringe to your collection! The crafter created this Parfleche from rawhide, then painted geometric designs on the front and stripes on the back with red, black, blue, and yellow paint.  He stitched the bag together with imitation sinew. The container comes with deerskin leather lacing closure ties. The crafter added 13 inch long dark brown Deerskin leather lacing as fringe to both sides.  The container measures  9″ wide x 9.5″ long.  One of a Kind!

A parfleche (pronounced par‑flesh) is a traditional Native American container made from rawhide. The word comes from the French parer (“to parry or shield”) and flèche (“arrow”), referring to the way the heavy hide could deflect arrows. Rawhide also served as a durable material for shields. To create a parfleche, makers—especially those from the Great Plains region—used untanned animal hide, often buffalo, and decorated the surface with intricate geometric designs painted with natural pigments from plants and minerals. These versatile containers held food, clothing, personal belongings, and important cultural items, and they played an essential role in the mobile lifestyle of many Plains communities, as people could easily carry them on horseback during travel and hunting expeditions.

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