Cherokee Beadwork D.1

D.1

Trade and Diplomacy

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[M] Now, why was this beadwork important to our ancestors? First of all, it was used for diplomatic protocol gift exchanges. We have many, many examples of historic artefacts that are in the collections of the families, the descendants of prominent tribal leaders of the time, and they would be traded between tribes. Like Cherokees would trade with the Choctaw, who would trade with the Chickasaw or whatever. And those important objects, those protocol gifts were among the greatest leaders of the tribe, […] But also, we find many of those objects, particularly bandolier bags, in the collections of people from Europe and then later people from the U.S. colonies and then later people from what became the United States. So, when you give someone, a leader of another country, a gift representing your culture, you give them the very finest piece of work that your culture can produce. So because they used bandolier bags so often for that, it is a clear indication that they were valuable to the people who created them. So we know that this beadwork was important to our ancestors because it was highly valued.

Video

1:22 minutes