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Before, during, and after the ratification of the Federal Constitution of 1787, Americans believed that they were governed under an unwritten constitution, a constitution that described an arrangement of power, confirmed ancient rights, and restricted government action. The existence of this unwritten constitution, and particularly its continuity, is something legal scholars have not adequately understood. Instead, both originalists and scholars of the "living" constitution think of 1787 as a hard break from the past and a starting point for their investigations. But Americans of the Founding generation did not share our view that the only constitution that mattered was the one the Framers designed. This Article focuses on a feature of American colonial life that reappeared with striking continuity for three generations after Independence--the vindication of unwritten constitutional rights by mob action, and specifically, the tradition of mobs turning to Indian costume to express a specific series of constitutional grievances. During the age of the Revolution, many Americans believed that mobs in the streets performed a legitimate role in the enforcement of their unwritten constitution. These mob actions involved ritualistic violence and consistent, non-linguistic symbolism. The endurance of this form of constitutional engagement, employing the same symbols to assert the same suite of legal claims, is simply astonishing. It is evidence of the tenacity of a series of constitutional commitments predating the Founding that were not encompassed by, or replaced with, a written constitution. This Article also makes a methodological point. An exclusive focus on official texts and the words, pamphlets, and letters of great men robs historical investigation of its depth and risks missing crucial insights about the past. Important evidence revealing how Americans conceived of their constitution and of themselves as legal actors can be found in their customs, in behavior, in performances in public spaces, and in the life of important ideas in literature and art. This Article focuses on a peculiar phenomenon as a way of modeling this point. The white protestor in Indian costume may seem like an oddity, but a deeper investigation reveals him to be a missing link, a key to how Americans believed their society was constituted, how they thought about justice, and how they understood the obligations the Revolution laid upon its inheritors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thliitsapilthim (designed ceremonial partitions) are textiles used by Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations families to display their crests, which declare rights, responsibilities, and prestige. These large painted murals adorn and transform spaces, from secular to ceremonial, during potlatches and other significant events. This paper combines nearly a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with archival- and museum-based research to argue that thliitsapilthim function as important legal documents for Nuu-chah-nulth peoples and make declarations about rights to territories, natural resources, ceremonial privileges, and family histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 19th century Northern Paiute Indian Sarah Winnemucca's use of the white colonial construct of what was thought by whites to be authentic Native American identity, or Indianness, to lecture to whites on their genocide of the Northern Paiutes. An overview of Winnemucca's costume as a strategy to reproduce settler-colonist imagery of Native Americans, so as to conduct lectures to them, is provided.

The article discusses the mainstream culture's angry response to Native Americans' rebukes for the cultural misappropriation of wearing war bonnets as a fashion in American popular culture. U.S. celebrities' wearing of war bonnets, including the American television personality Khloe Kardashian's use of war bonnets, is discussed.

The author discusses the clothing worn in portraits of the Sauk chief Black Hawk. She mentions the suit as a symbol of the social relationship between the Sauk and the Americans, as a marker of ethnic identity, and as a representation of Black Hawk's personal identity.

Differences between Great Lakes Algonquians and their colonizers in the meanings and values of dress were not simply a matter of different symbolic meanings for the coded elements. Rather, for Algonquians, the whole realm of the visual played a lesser role in the construction, maintenance and negotiation of identities than it did for the colonizers. Whereas nineteenth-century British and Americans “read” dress to ascertain identities, including moral character, occupation and class, with a few notable exceptions, Great Lakes Algonquians relied instead upon behaviour as a primary indicator of identity. The meanings and values humans attribute to dress are linked to the economic and social structures of their production and distribution. These structures provide the basis for the modes of perception through which people conceive “selves” located in their physical and cognitive environments. For humans, as corporeal beings with subsistence needs, human–animal relations play a major role in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This piece examines a collection of archaeological fabrics never before published, from fifteen historic-period Seneca sites, held by the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC). The collection includes one of the largest assemblages of early modern archaeological fabrics in the world and the single largest collection of such fabrics from Native North American sites. The documentary sources for this period mainly cover the frontiers of Iroquois-European interaction, but the RMSC collection represents a unique window on cultural entanglement and incorporation of new material culture in Native American homelands. Together with the textual record, the RMSC collection shows the ways in which Seneca cultural entanglement with European settlements on the fringes of Iroquoia allowed women to elaborate on existing decorative traditions with new raw materials and to craft a rising standard of living. A careful reading of the choices apparent in the selection of fabrics at Seneca sites shows that the symbolic meanings of Iroquois material culture shifted between home and the diplomatic frontier while Seneca paradigms structured the integration of imported goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overseas body provided an interesting and useful site of cultural understanding in early modern England. The marked body in particular was used by observers to address important questions concerning correct bodily deportment and its connection to civility, morality, and religiosity, resulting in an integration of the discourses of foreign and domestic somatic presentation. This study traces the changing English constructions of the marked body in the public discourse of the overseas world published between 1590 and 1660, a period that witnessed important changes in attitudes towards overseas corporeality. It challenges the common assumption that the marked body was an ephemeral and fleeting subject before Cook's Endeavour voyage, illustrating the textured and changing understanding that early modern English commentators displayed when confronted with corporeal alteration in the overseas world. In particular, it explores the reflexive contemplation overseas ornamentation engendered in England during the early years of English colonial endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plain-weave pointed- and rounded-toe sandals made by the Anasazi of the American Southwest have received only limited attention by archaeologists. This has restricted their use in investigating issues of chronology, cultural interaction, and ideology. This article presents the analysis of 75 plain-weave sandals from Antelope Cave, Arizona, discusses their physical attributes and the techniques used in their construction, and compares this assemblage with other examples of plain-weave pointed- and rounded-toe sandals from the northern Southwest. As the comparative literature grows, researchers will be able to use this medium to more effectively investigate the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a 19th century Oglala Sioux beaded child's vest from Kyle, South Dakota.

The article focuses on the origins of hypertext and multimedia through tracing how the American Indian communities have made used of wampum belts as hypertextual technologies. It notes wampum belts as something which have extended human memories of inherited knowledges by way of nonlinear designs, interconnected and associative storage and retrieval methods before the discovery of Western hypertext.

The collection history and subsequent display in Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum of the decorated shirt and leggings of the Blackfoot chief, Crowfoot, are explored in this article. Crowfoot was active in the 1870s, a time of mounting tension across the Western Plains in both Canada and the United States brought on by the arrival of the railroads and territorial expansion. Cecil E. Denny, who collected this sacred costume, was an officer in Canada's North-West Mounted Police and was involved in the negotiations between the Canadian government and the Blackfoot people which sought to pacify the region. This article argues that curatorial practices at Exeter in the late-nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century omitted the circumstances of Denny's acquisition, exhibiting these garments as generic examples of clothing. By recovering the circumstances of Denny's encounter with Crowfoot, the article restores some complexity to the items he acquired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The northern quahog, Mercenaria mercenaria, ranges along the Atlantic Coast of North America from the Canadian Maritimes to Florida, while the southern quahog, M. campechiensis, ranges mostly from Florida to southern Mexico. The northern quahog was fished by native North Americans during prehistoric periods. They used the meats as food and the shells as scrapers and as utensils. The European colonists copied the Indians treading method, and they also used short rakes for harvesting quahogs. The Indians of southern New England made wampum from quahog shells, used it for ornaments and sold it to the colonists, who, in turn, traded it to other Indians for furs. During the late 1600's, 1700's, and 1800's, wampum was made in small factories for eventual trading with Indians farther west for furs. The quahoging industry has provided people in many coastal communities with a means of earning a livelihood and has provided consumers with a tasty, wholesome food whether eaten raw, steamed, cooked in chowders, or as stuffed quahogs. More than a dozen methods and types of gear have been used in the last two centuries for harvesting quahogs. They include treading and using various types of rakes and dredges, both of which have undergone continuous improvements in design. Modern dredges are equipped with hydraulic jets and one type has an escalator to bring the quahogs continuously to the boats. In the early 1900's, most provinces and states established regulations to conserve and maximize yields of their quahog stocks. They include a minimum size, now almost universally a 38-mm shell width, and can include gear limitations and daily quotas. The United States produces far more quahogs than either Canada or Mexico. The leading producer in Canada is Prince Edward Island. In the United States, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island lead in quahog production in the north, while Virginia and North Carolina lead in the south. Connecticut and Florida were large producers in the 1990's. The State of Campeche leads in Mexican production. In the northeastern United States, the bays with large openings, and thus large exchanges of bay waters with ocean waters, have much larger stocks of quahogs and fisheries than bays with small openings and water exchanges. Quahog stocks in certified beds have been enhanced by transplanting stocks to them from stocks in uncertified waters and by planting seed grown in hatcheries, which grew in number from Massachusetts to Florida in the 1980's and 1990's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the archaeological and documentary evidence for wampum production at the Albany almshouse within its historical and cultural contexts and in light of Dutch notions of charity, while considering the continually shifting functions and meanings of wampum. It suggests that in the mid-eighteenth century, both the Dutch Reformed Church and private entrepreneurs were involved in producing wampum for trade on the northern and western frontiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the repatriation of eleven wampum belts, belts designed with shell beads, on May 8, 1998 to the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy on Grand River, Canada. Significance of the wampum belts to Iroquois tradition and culture; Reference to an article on the return of the belts in the text `Ethnohistory,' by William N. Fenton; Details on a ceremony staged at the Onondaga Longhouse on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario; Factors which prompted the belt's return.

Examines how clothing provided an important means of self-presentation and cultural mediation in the Mohawk Valley frontier in the mid-eighteenth century. Development of a middle ground through material culture brought about by clothing trade; Challenges posed by clothing to traditional cultural differences between Native Americans and English people.

The article provides a physical description of the physique of American Indians and their clothing. Some of the tribes discussed include the Iroquois, the Cherokees, the Creeks, the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, and Crows. The author describes trade among the Indian tribes, their grooming habits, and their diets. A description of the tanning and dying of hides and skins is presented. The author considers seasonal variations in Indian dress, the use of more decorative clothes for weddings and other celebrations compared to more everyday apparel, and the different clothing worn by men and women.