Thunderbird Pouch

Thunderbird Pouch

This extraordinary bag shows a Thunderbird, a powerful manito or spirit-being, which is often associated with warfare. The bag was made in an unusual way: its inner cloth pouch is enclosed in finely cut, netted hide thongs which are painstakingly wrapped with dyed porcupine quills to form the design. The bag is embellished with a recycled trade silver armband, which has been cut in two for the front and back; it was made by Charles Arnoldi, worked in Montreal from 1799-1817. Its stamped designs have been used as the guidelines for holes punched through it to space the hide thongs for the netting. On one side of the silver, the word ‘Pinesi’—Anishinaabeg for Thunderbird—has been scratched onto the band. The use of the Thunderbird imagery links the bag to others made by Anishinaabe women in the Great Lakes region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

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