Auction details
9:00 AM PT - Feb 20th, 2012
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Native American Indian Gauntlets, beaded, Plateau style, flannel lined. Wild West era, used but excellent condition. C. 1900. Fringed leather with beaded bird perching on pink flower with green leaves. Pink beaded cross upon glove top. Native American Indian decoartion.
Provenance: Miki and James J. Mangan III of Fairfield, CT Size: H. 14.25 W. 8.25 D. 1 Weight: 12 ounces Condition: very good, beadwork is excellent and leather is good - has been used, but still intact condition. Gauntlets are protective gloves that have a flared cuff. For centuries, these cuffs protected European and Asian bow hunters and military archers from being snapped on the wrist by their bowstrings. Medieval soldiers and knights began wearing chain-mail gauntlets during the 1300s, and armored gauntlets appeared in Europe during the 1400s. Four hundred years later and halfway around the world, leather gauntlets appeared in the American West as military uniform accessories. They were soon appropriated by Indian artists, embellished with diverse ornaments, and incorporated into the civilian wardrobe. Here they became intrinsically linked with Western people, history, and landscape, and a symbol of the frontier. The original European form was reworked with a wild American veneer. In the American imagination, fringed leather garments have long been synonymous with the frontier. James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo, an early American literary hero, entered the nineteenth-century national consciousness dressed in a foxskin cap and a deerskin coat, leggings, and moccasins. From an early date, Bumppo's persona, appearance, and nickname -- "Leatherstocking" -- were intrinsically linked to the attire of those who lived in the wild margins of the American colonies. Bumppo's attire was consistent with that of individuals who traversed the western boundaries of the thirteen colonies throughout the late eighteenth century. Daniel Boone and the frontiersmen who crossed Cumberland Gap into the wilds of Kentucky were frequently buckskin-clad. Washington Irving was among the authors who confirmed this regional stereotype. Describing St. Louis in 1810, he recalls that "a stark Kentucky hunter, in leathern hunting dress," could still occasionally be seen. Rules are often tested by their exceptions, and the most celebrated Western explorers are the ones who defied the buckskin tradition, such as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The history of the West is populated with a variety of rugged and flamboyant individualists, but the Lewis and Clark expedition was a regimented military operation. Popular representations of the explorers mistakenly transfer fringed leather garments to them and their company; however, the Corps of Discovery was generally clad in military uniforms. Some of the company's enlisted men made leather clothing after their uniforms wore out, but the expedition's officers did not join them in the undertaking. Two members of the Lewis and Clark expedition surely did wear buckskin clothing. In 1806, John Colter left the Corps of Discovery near the headwaters of the Missouri. George Drouillard returned to the interior West the following year. Both men then made their living as independent fur trappers, or "mountain men." Condition report very good, beadwork is excellent and leather is good - has been used, but still intact condition.
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