Native American Unit Home - Regalia
The
Dakota Sioux lived on the Great Plains. My regalia shows what a Sioux woman
or girl might have worn. This type of outfit is called a tunic. My regalia is
mostly brown and also has red, yellow and light blue pictures on it. The trimming
on the sleeves is light blue, too.
Guess what the Sioux ate? They ate buffalo, buffalo and more buffalo. The Sioux needed to base their lives around their natural habitat. They followed the buffalo herds from place to place.
The original
Sioux clothing was made from buffalo and the very few other animals that lived
on the Great Plains like snakes, owls, porcupines, and prairie dogs. They rode
horses to hunt and follow the buffalo. The horses, and sometimes dogs, pulled
the Sioux's belongings on a travois. They painted symbols on their horses to
show battles or nature signs.
The Sioux were great warriors. They were the most powerful nation on the Great Plains in the 1800s. The Sioux attacked weaker nations like the Pawnee and the Comanche and stole their horses and weapons. They also fought the US Army over control of the land.
The material that I used to make my regalia is suede cloth. I picked a T-shirt to use as a pattern. Then my Mom cut the fabric and turned the fabric into my regalia. We wanted to make sure the seams wouldn't come loose, so we used my neighbor's sewing machine to go over the stitching.
A big difference between the way I made my regalia and the way the original Sioux clothing was made is that I could use a needle to sew instead of a porcupine quill. Another difference is that I could go to the store and buy fabric. The Sioux had to make the fabric from animal skin.
One way my regalia is the same as the Sioux clothing is that we both made the clothing from things we could find. We did not buy the clothing already finished.
Bibliography
Haslam, Andrew & Parsons, Alexandra. Make it Work: North American Indians. New York: thompson Learning, 1995.
Macdonald, Fiona. Native Americans. Ladybird Books, 1997.
Murdoch, David. North American Indian. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 1995.
Osinski, Alice. The Sioux. Chicago: the Children's Press, 1984.
Sita, Lisa. Indians of the Great Plains - Traditions, History, Legends and Life. New York: Michael Friedman Publishing Group, 1997.