Their life in the past

The squaw : a faithful and obedient woman

The warrior had to respect his wife. She made clothes and jewels. She was the keeper of the fire-place. At the age of six, the small Indian girl helped his mother to do the housework. At the age of ten, she took care of her brothers and sisters. When she was forteen, she married an older boy. As a result, she became a real Indian woman. She mounted and dismantled the tipi to move out to another hunting territory. She skined the dead beast. She prepared and taned skins to make clothes and mocassins.

The tipi : a house for the all family

The tipis are very confortable. Inside, there were soft furs and brushwoods. A tipi is made of bisons skins. During a feast, the Indian women assembled the skins. After mounting the tipi, they kindled a fire to make it stronger against the rain. The men are not allowed to help the women. The tipis of the chiefs and the healers were painted. The pictures often represented a vision a man had during a religious ceremony.

A tipi

The Indian art : all is symbol

The respect of the nature was very important for the Indians. So the nature influenced their art. To make their work of art, they used some materials : wood, bone, metal, ivory, textile. The Indian art is present in a few objects :

masks used during ceremonies represented fabulous or mythical characters;
totems, which could be 24 meters high, were carved to relate family histories;
containers made with osier which had an infinite number of styles and pictures;
clothes contained pearls, shell pieces, porcupine spines and feather pipes in order to have colored and accurate motives.

Author : Julien L.
Last update : June 2005