Octopus Bag: Athapaskan Women in the Colonial Encounter
Before we examine the octopus bag, let us have a brief overview of the history of the Athapaskan People. About 10,000 to 8,000 years ago, small bands of hunting people, known to anthropologists as Paleo-Indians, came to occupy the western regions of the Subarctic and later the east. These people were the ancestors of the Athapaskans. They developed a forest-based culture and relied on hunting large and small game animals and fishing to survive. Because of the harsh environment, the Athapaskans developed a strong sense of community based on mutual dependence and cooperation between individuals, families and bands [Hail, 1989, 17].
In 1670, the Hudson’s Bay Company was chartered by King Charles II of England as a joint-stock company and soon monopolized fur trading in the subarctic region [Hail, 22]. The King colonized the territory and gave what later became Northwestern Canada to his cousin, Prince Rupert. Trappers, traders and missionaries who worked in the fur trade thus became the first Europeans to penetrate the North. They signed treaties with Native inhabitants and developed relationships with Native populations.
As trading relationship grew, more missionaries went to the Subarctic to set up churches and schools, hoping to convert Native people to Christianity and teach western knowledge and practical trades to Native children. The Jesuits established their missions in the Eastern Subarctic in the 17th century; the Roman Catholic Oblate Order, and Protestant Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists arrived in the early 19th century [Hail, 27]. Reverend John West was the first Anglican clergyman sent to the region in 1820 by the English Church Missionary Society, “[seeking] the instruction, and [endeavouring] to meliorate the condition of the Native Indians” [Hail, 28].
As we turn to examine the life story of our octopus bag, we will find that it encapsulates many elements of the evolution of Athapaskan history and culture before and after the colonial encounter. One of the first questions that one would ask upon seeing this bag is probably about its shape – why is it shaped like an octopus? These bags have a long history among Native populations in North America. In ancient times, they were made from the whole skin of small animals, like otters, weasels and skunks, folded in the middle so that the fore and hind legs dangle down. They were used to hold flint and tinder, or a personal pipe and tobacco, so were also called “fire bags.” By the mid-19th century, a fabric octopus bag with four pairs of tabs, like our object, became the most popular bag type in the region. Like our item, these bags were usually decorated with imported glass beads, silk embroidery thread and worsted woolen tassels, all materials obtained through the fur trade. Thus, even though the shape of the octopus bag was a purely Native invention, its evolution to the current form, including the material used, and embroidery and bead work, was heavily influenced by the fur trade and especially contacts between Indigenous women and Europeans. Let us now examine this story of evolution.
The oldest decorated pouches were sacred. More recent ones around the beginning of the 19th century were less so and more as symbols of tribal affiliation, family pride, and personal prestige [Duncan, 1991, 57]. During this time, bags were also sold to European traders as exotic souvenirs. When I first saw this bag, I was struck by the beauty of its embroidery. The sophisticated pattern and impeccable beadwork demonstrate extremely fine craftsmanship. Because of the amount of labor required to produce these beaded items, they were often given by Native and Métis wives and daughters to their husbands and fathers, signifying the closeness of their relationships. By the middle of the 19th century, most Native and Métis women in the Subarctic began to produce floral embroidery in silk thread and beads on both cloth and hide, which became a symbolic form of Subarctic artistic expressions. Most of these women learned embroidery while attending church, which also taught them other housekeeping skills, European dress codes and behaviors. “Ornamental arts” was considered by European settlers as a necessary skill to turn girls into young ladies [Hail, 31]. In addition to the skill and material, the floral pattern of the embroidery was also affected by European embroidery traditions. Athapaskan women usually based their works off of a conventional pattern and added their individual interpretations. Thus, even though many Athapaskan beadwork and embroideries are similar, every single piece of creation is also unique.
Many choose to ignore Native women beadwork because it was heavily influenced by the fur trade and European artistic traditions. However, like art historian Megan Smetzer eloquently noted, “inventiveness is a normal process of cultural continuity” [Smetzer, 2015, 453]. The beading on this bag embodies the flexibility, resilience and resourcefulness of Native women. They continued their traditional cultural practices with new materials and patterns, and they profited off of the developing European tourist market to survive economically. Therefore, beadwork was a precious niche for these women to demonstrate their agency and status within their communities and in their interactions with colonial settlers. For many of them, embroidery also created a female community in which they found companionship and solidarity. The women doing the work together all knew one another and exchanged ideas [Hail, 33]. Thus, this bag tells a story of resistance, solidarity and survivance despite the exploitative nature of colonization.
Now, I want to talk briefly about the collector of this bag, Emma Shaw Colcleugh, and the role this woman played in the life of our object. Colcleugh was a late Victorian-era collector, a Rhode Island journalist and teacher who travelled widely in the 1880s and 1890s. Her 1894 journey “into the North” on the Athabasca-Slave-Macenzie river system, on which she collected this octopus bag, was sponsored by the Hudson Bay Company. Hail described the Colcleugh collection as an artifact in itself, shaped by her personal aesthetic tastes, particular interest in female-made and used objects, her identity as a female collector, and her relationships with and perceptions of the communities from which she collected. Colcleugh, like all of the other collectors, was inevitably a “person of her time”, who looked upon indigenous people distantly as “the other”. From quotes like, “in the mission schools, sweet-faced sisters cared for little Indian waifs,” we know that Colcleugh interacted with Native communities with a condescending gaze, thinking of them as “primitives” [Hail, 50]. However, her identity as a female collector differentiated her gaze from her male contemporaries. There were moments when she sat beside native women, watching them drew up their designs and said, “It is quite true that the primitive people have much to learn of us, but it is equally true that from them we might take many a lesson with profit” [Hail, 1991, 31]. Therefore, one wonders whether these beaded items served as some kind of bridge that connected this female Victorian collector, who faced discriminations within her own society, with the women who produced these beautiful works of art.
Finally, as this octopus bag currently sits at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, I would like to remind our readers that such beading techniques and other traditional crafts in the Subarctic region are not dead and gone relics of the past, but vitally important cultural practices in these societies today. These communities have great pride in their handicraft skills, and many women feel obligated to pass them down to their children and grandchildren. Maria Houle, a bead embroiderer from Fort Chipewyan said that she learned to sew “from my mum and auntie, since I was 12 years old; I’m 60 years old now, and still sewing” [Hail, 98] She also said that she is passing the skill on to her granddaughter, who is 14 years old. Her grandchildren and others come to her home, “sometimes two hours… twice a week” [Hail, 99]. She draws beadwork patterns for them, teaches them how to start, and to finish.
Now, as we look at this octopus bag, we see more than a decorated pouch in an interesting shape. We see its origin in the shape of small animals, demonstrating the Athapaskan people’s close relationship with their land as hunters. We see how the fur trade impacted and forever altered Subarctic communities and their ways of life, as Native people were forced to adopt European customs, religions and values and developed relationships with Europeans. We understand that despite the harsh realities of colonialism, Native women continue to use their beadwork and embroidery as a demonstration of resistance and survivance. The Athapaskan community living in the Northwest territories today is the testament to their resilience, and beadwork and embroidery still play a huge role in the community linking the older generation of women to the younger one, the past to the present and future. This octopus bag is indeed beautiful in itself, but it is truly precious because it has stood witness to the survivance of a community at the frontier of the colonial encounter.
Works Cited
- Hail, Barbara A., Duncan, Kate C. “Out of the North: the Subarctice Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.” Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University. 1989.
- Hail Barbara A. “ ‘I Saw These Things’: The Victorian Collection of Emma Shaw Colcleugh.” Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 28, No. 1, Art and Material Culture of the North American Subarctic and Adjacent Regions, 1991, pp. 16-33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40316288.
- Duncan, Kate C. “So Many Bags, so Little Known: Reconstructing the Patterns of Evolution and Distribution of Two Algonquian Bag Forms.” Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 28, No. 1, Art and Material Culture of the North American Subarctic and Adfacent Regions, 1991, pp. 56-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40316292
- Peers, Laura. “ ‘Many Tender Ties’: The Shifting Contexts and Meanings of the S Black Bag.” World Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 2, The Cultural Biography of Objects (Oct., 1999), pp. 288-302. http://www.jstor.org/stable/125063.
- Smetzer, Megan, “Opening the Drawer: Unpacking Tlingit Beadwork in Museum Collections and Beyond.” Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and their Coastal Neighbors. University of Nebraska Press (2015). http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1d98cf5.25
