Native American Cutout Silhouettes Embossed Boxed Cards

The Native Americans of the Northeast made cutout silhouettes from time immemorial. These patterns, cut from birchbark, were used to delineate the edges of images on canoes, household vessels, and tools, or to transfer designs to beadwork on clothing and moccasins. Most cutouts fancifully depicted the flora and fauna of the boreal forest and its waters.

As tribes were driven west, the cutout tradition went with them—until the retreat took them beyond the birch country and onto the plains. The Santee Sioux took up the eastern craft, and in an uncharacteristically positive side effect of European expansion, they found in whites a source of both scissors and heavy, crisp ledger paper—the former obtained through trade, the latter from U.S. Army or Indian Service castoffs. With agile tools and sturdy, grainless media, the Santee Sioux began making cutouts that were art objects in themselves.

Bureau of Indian Affairs teacher Mable Morrow collected the cutouts reproduced on these notecards while working on the Flandreau, South Dakota reservation in the twenties and thirties. Her cutout collection is now housed at the Museum of International Folk Art, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.

These cards are not available individually.