German Collections
from the American Revolution
Christian F. Feest
The second half of the eighteenth century was an impor-
tant period in the protohistory of anthropology as well as
in the history of ethnographic collecting. After more than
two centuries of European expansion into other parts of
the world, the enormous mass of observational data on
the manners and customs of a wide variety of peoples,
which had been accumulated more or less randomly,
begged to be compared, classified, and explained. In the
short run, Joseph François Lafitau’s comparative ap-
proach of 1724 was less influential (partly, no doubt, be-
cause his book was not translated into English for nearly
250 years) than Carl Linné’s Systema naturae (1735), whose
taxonomic scheme was adapted to the needs of a classifi-
catory interest in peoples and their cultures. It was the cre-
ation of terms descriptive of the subject matter (such as
“culture”) and—in the context of a proposed Systema pop-
ulorum—of the discipline itself (i.e., “ethnography” and its
equivalents) by German historians and lexicographers in
the 1770s, which ultimately established a quickly recog-
nized new field of discourse (cp., e.g., Vermeulen 1992).
On the three circumnavigations of Captain James
Cook and on other voyages of the Enlightenment, the
Linnean principles were first applied to the collecting of
ethnographic data in general and of artifacts in particular.
In the wake of this development, the old mode of the
Kunst- and Wunderkammer with its emphasis on the un-
usual and its disregard for provenance and contextual in-
formation gave way to a new ethnographic paradigm of
collecting, in which peoples (and thus provenance) pro-
vided the primary taxa. These newly defined goals of col-
lecting along with the establishment of separate ethno-
graphic collections (generally within natural history cabi-
nets) led to a rapid increase in the number of artifacts
both collected and preserved. While there presently exist
just about 150 artifacts from North America definitively
known to have been collected prior to 1750 (and perhaps
an about equal number from the same period without re-
44
liable documentation), no less than about 250 artifacts
have been preserved of those collected in northwestern
North America on Cook’s Third Voyage during a few
weeks in the spring of 1778 (Feest 1992; 1993: 6–7; 1995a:
324; 1995b: 111–112).
The same period also saw far-reaching changes in the
political and cultural map of northeastern North Ameri-
ca. France lost its North American colonies at the end of
the French and Indian wars, and England some of its
American possessions in the course of the American Rev-
olution. This in turn led to the physical and political re-
alignment of considerable portions of the Native popula-
tion of the Northeast. A better understanding of these
processes as they affected the indigenous peoples of this
region will ultimately have to be based on an analysis of
the historical-ethnographic record of this period, the
knowledge of which is still far from adequate—and this
notably includes the evidence supplied by artifacts.
The present paper will discuss artifacts collected by
German mercenaries during the American Revolution
within the framework just outlined. These Germans are
often collectively referred to as “Hessians,” because two
thirds of the approximately 30,000 soldiers leased by King
George III from impoverished and/or greedy German petty
princes for the better protection of his American posses-
sions did in fact come from the two principalities of
Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau. Four other principalities,
however, were also involved, with Brunswick sending near-
ly 6,000 of its men, Bayreuth-Anspach 2,300, and both
Christian F. Feest is Director of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Wien,
Austria. His published work on Native American history, anthropology,
and art includes Native Arts of North America (21992), Indians and Europe
(ed., 21999), Sitting Bull. “Der letzte Indianer” (ed., 1999), The Cultures of
Native North Americans (ed., 2000), and Indian Times. Nachrichten aus dem
roten Amerika (ed., 2002).
Author’s address: Museum für Völkerkunde, Neue Burg, A-1010 Wien,
Austria.
E-mail: christian.feest@ethno-museum.ac.at

Fig. 1 “The Indian Warrior.” Engraving after a drawing by Major
August Wilhelm. Du Roi in Zimmermann (1804: frontispiece). The war-
rior is identified as a Sioux, the figures in the background as a Mohawk
and a French-Canadian peasant (Zimmermann 1804: 381).
Waldeck and Anhalt-Zerbst 1,200 each.1 Of these various
troops, the contingents from Hesse-Kassel and Bayreuth-
Anspach had few if any direct contacts with Native peo-
ples, while the Waldeckers had mostly rather transient en-
counters with Creeks, Chickasaws, and others during
their sojourn in Florida and Louisiana. Close to 10,000
soldiers from Brunswick, Hesse-Hanau, and Anhalt-Zerb-
st, however, were exposed to sustained contacts with a va-
riety of local and foreign Native peoples during their ac-
1. In addition, a German contingent from Zweibrücken (Deux-Ponts)
was involved in the American Revolution from 1780–1783 as part of the
French expeditionary force under General Rochambeau (Acomb 1958).
2. The drawing, upon which the engraving in Fig. 1 was based, is now
missing from a set of drawings of military uniforms by A. W. Du Roi in
the Stadtarchiv Braunschweig. Other drawings of ethnographic interest
include two “Canadian Indians” drawn on 29 August 1780 in Newport,
Rhose Island, by Baron Ludwig von Closen of Zweibrücken (Acomb
1958: 265), and “An Indian of the Stockbridge Tribe” (1779) by Johann
Ewald of the Hesse-Kassel Riflemen Corps (Tustin 1979: 149). Al-
though captioned in German, a watercolor drawing of a Huron man
and an Abenaki woman now in Brunswick (Harrison et al. 1987a: 69),
was part of a series of French-Canadian drawings produced in the 1770s.
Fig. 2 Undated drawing (ca. 1780) from the troop diary of the Hesse-
Hanau Riflemen Corps, depicting a French-Canadian sled “Carriole”
with its thill (“Travail”), and an indigenous snowshoe (“Raquette”), pipe
tomahawk (“Casse-tête”), and painted bison skin (“Peau de Buffle”).
After Auerbach (1996: 319).
tivities in the St. Lawrence River valley (Eelking 1863,
Lowell 1970).
While the published diaries of the mercenary soldiers
reflect a general interest both in the indigenous and
French-Canadian population and their material culture
(including some drawings2 of persons and artifacts; see
Figs. 1, 2), they provide only limited evidence for the ac-
tual process of collecting in the field. Baron von Closen,
for example, describes a gift exchange in 1780 with a del-
egation vom Kahnawake, in which in return for “blankets,
knives, and other objects of hardware, ... they left us ...
their sandals, belts, and many other trinkets, also some
scalps” (Acomb 1958: 39). A less ceremonial manner of
appropriation is described by Anton Adolf Du Roi of the
Brunswick regiment of Col. Specht; upon their first land-
fall at a Micmac village in New Brunswick, temporarily de-
serted by its inhabitants, the soldiers saw “baskets and
drinking vessels artificially made of birchbark, which not
to take with us we were unable to refrain from because of
their rarity” (Teuscher 1983: 88). In 1778, Capt. Johann
Heinrichs of the Kassel Riflemen reported the loss of his
baggage, including “an Indianbow, arrows, a net for catch-
ing birds, scalp dagger, knife, etc, and other curiosities.
That I was exceedingly displeased with this mishap, you
45
Fig. 3 Burden strap with moosehair false embroidery, St. Lawrence River valley, ca. 1775. HLMD cat.no. 1842.200. Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy
of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt). This piece is unusual because it is the only one of more than fifty examples of this type on record that is
edged with white imitation wampum—a characteristic feature of artifacts of the period of the American Revolution. Linked pairs of diamonds are more
commonly found in wampum and imitation wampum work (cp. Fig. 11; but see Stephenson 2007: fig. 1, ex Sotheby’s 1982: lot 100, ex K. Schindler coll.).
may easily imagine, because I intended enriching the Cab-
inet of our celebrated Dr. Dolten with my acquisitions.
Still I have a few curiosities remain with me” (Heinrichs
1898: 144–145).
Significant ethnographic collections, whose ultimate
fate largely remains to be reconstructed, were thus assem-
bled in the course of these encounters. Some of the ma-
terial quickly entered the cabinets of the local princes,
which were then on the verge of becoming public muse-
ums. A few pieces appear to have enriched the recently es-
tablished ethnographic collection of the Academic Muse-
um at the University of Göttingen3—the place were the
word “ethnography” had just been coined by August Lud-
wig Schlözer, who also published several of the reports
sent from North America by German officers and field
curates (Schlözer 1778–1779). Other objects became part
of collections elsewhere in Germany, especially because ser-
viceable men from other principalities were also recruited
or impressed. The largest number may have remained in
the families of those who had safely returned, to be dis-
posed of by later generations, who either discarded them,
gave them to local museums, or sold them to private col-
lectors. Oral traditions and scraps of documentary evi-
dence allow us to identify Arthur Speyer (the second in
three generations of dealers/collectors of that name) and
Patty Frank, the later director of the Karl-May-Museum in
Radebeul, as the most notable beneficiaries of such trans-
actions in the 1920s and 1930s (cp. Sturtevant 2001: 163
fn. 2). The fact that neither of them kept adequate records
of these acquisitions is highly unfortunate. The same is
true of the museums which deaccessioned Revolutionary
War material in the course of their dealings with Speyer
and Frank.
Of the two museums which apparently were the major
early recipients of collections,4 the Ducal Museum (now
Hessian State Museum) in Darmstadt was bombed out
during World War II and lost all of its old inventories.5
Eleven pieces from the Darmstadt collection survived be-
cause they were on permanent loan to the Deutsches
46
Ledermuseum, Offenbach. They include two burden-
straps with moosehair false embroidery (Fig. 2 and Völger
1976: no. 4.30.21; cp. note 4 below), two canoe models
(Fig. 3), a toboggan and a cradle board model, an “Iro-
quois headdress” (Fig. 12), three pairs of moccasins, and
a quilled knifecase (Völger 1976: no. 4.20.34). The earli-
est documentary record for most of them are catalog num-
bers assigned in 1842. While they are here attributed to
the time of the American Revolution on the basis of their
style, it should be noted that the collection included other
early objects from North America (such as Naskapi cloth-
ing), which cannot be linked to the Hessian mercenaries.
Of another possibly seven pieces from Darmstadt identi-
fied in the Speyer collection (Sturtevant 2001: 174 and
notes 33–34), most or all may likewise have been collect-
ed during the American Revolution.
This leaves us with Brunswick as the primary source of
documentary evidence for the collecting activities of the
German mercenaries. On this basis, it is possible to attempt
some further identification of material now in other
repositories.
The Brunswick regiments arrived in Canada during
the summer and fall of 1776 and took up quarters near
Trois Rivières between Québec and Montreal. They par-
ticipated in the campaigns against the rebels in New York,
until they were decisively beaten by the Americans at
Saratoga in October 1777, taken captive, and removed to
camps in New England and Virginia. Only two regiments
3. Some of these early pieces may have been traded from the ethno-
graphic collection of the University of Göttingen to the Speyer collec-
tion. A pipe tomahawk still in Göttingen (cat.no. Am 432a; Fig. 5) has
no known collection history (“old collection”), but is identical with the
two pipe tomahawks now in the municipal museum in Brunswick
(Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig, hereinafter “SMB”).
4. Related artifacts may have entered a number of other collections,
such as the Academic Museum in Göttingen, the Royal collection in
Munich, the Ducal museum in Gotha, and possibly others, but docu-
mentation for such transfers is poor or completely lacking.
5. The earliest guide to the present Hessisches Landesmuseum (here-
inafter “HLMD”), published in 1818 (Pauli 1818), makes no reference to
the material under discussion, which is first noted in Walther (1844).
Fig. 4 Painted model of a birchbark canoe with cloth sail. Probably Abenaki, Trois Rivières, ca. 1775. HLMD no cat.no. Photograph: C. F. Feest (cour-
tesy of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt).
escaped this fate and (together with later reinforcements)
continued in the St. Lawrence valley.
Local Native contacts were especially with the Mo-
hawks at Kahnawake, the Algonquins at Lac-de-Deux-
Montagnes and Point-du-Lac, the Abenakis at Odanak
and Bécancour, and the Hurons at Nouvelle Lorette (Ep-
ping 1911: 38, 45–46; cp. Phillips in Harrison et al.
1987a: 69); but they also frequently encountered other al-
lies of the English, such as Joseph Brant’s Mohawks
(Riedesel 1989: 233–234), Micmacs, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Fox,
Kickapoos (Epping 1911: 38, 47), and even Dakotas (Fig. 1).
A late eighteenth-century inventory of the Ducal Mu-
seum in Brunswick lists thirty-seven American items appar-
ently received from returned mercenaries. This inventory
offers a tribal attribution for only one piece, and it like-
wise does not identify the individual collectors. During
the second half of the nineteenth century, the Municipal
Museum of Brunswick received fourteen artifacts collected
in 1776–1777 by Lieutenant Johann Ludolph Unger, as
well as a few individual pieces which for stylistic reasons
must likewise have been collected at that time. In 1899
most of the ethnographic pieces still surviving at the
Ducal Museum were transferred to the municipal muse-
um. The best documentation is available for a small group
of objects given to the Brunswick State Museum around
1920. These had been collected by Major August Wilhelm
Du Roi and sent to his brother in October 1777 from “Fort
Charles on the Chambley [Richelieu] River”; but the ac-
companying list identifies the pieces only as parts of the
“outfit of a savage” (Kasprycki 1997: 69).
The total number of artifacts collected by Brunswick
mercenaries which thus entered the local museums is at
least 55; of these, 38 can still be identified. The following
selection (augmented by pieces from other German
repositories of a likely Revolutionary War origin) faithful-
ly reflects the composition of these collections, their
strengths and weaknesses, the availability of certain arti-
fact types, and the apparent selective principles employed
by the collectors. Fourteeen objects—roughly a quarter of
the documented pieces—are items of dress and orna-
ment, with moccasins making up the vast majority. Seven
others are bags and pouches for personal use. I will later
discuss this group of generally quilled leather artifacts in
some more detail, as also the second large group, which is
made up of sixteen items of moosehair-embroidered
birchbark.
Like the moosehair pieces, the various models of cra-
dle boards, toboggans, and canoes were clearly products
47

Fig. 5 Miniature cradleboard, painted wood, cloth, cotton, glass beads,
probably part of canoe model. SMB cat.no. 208 (ex HAUM 1271).
Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy of Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig).
for the early tourist trade, but they also illustrate the do-
main of transportation, which in addition was represent-
ed by snowshoes.6 The cradleboard model in Brunswick
(Fig. 5) closely resembles one in Darmstadt and another
one formerly in the Speyer collection, which was identi-
fied as from the Algonquins of Lac-de-Deux-Montagnes; it
is quite unlike another one from the Speyer collection
with the inscribed provenance “Jeune Lorette.”7
The same attribution was offered by Benndorf and
Speyer (1968: 75, Abb. 41) for a birchbark canoe model
and accompanying dolls8 which are virtually identical
with those from Brunswick, although Brasser (1976: 134,
#123) later preferred to call the Speyer piece a “Maliseet
type.” While the Speyer and Brunswick dolls (and proba-
bly also the canoes) must have been made by the same per-
son, another model sent by the Huron and Abenaki as a
votive offering to the cathedral in Chartres (cat.no. 11405;
Harrison et al. 1987a: frontispiece; Phillips in Harrison et
al. 1987b: 54, #W77; Joubeaux 2002: 92–93) and anoth-
er one in the Farquharson collection (Phillips and Idiens
1994: 25, fig. 1) are broadly similar, but not identical; yet
another similar but unpainted model, collected in Trois
Rivières in 1799, is in the Musée d’Ethnographie, Neuchâ-
tel (cat.no. IV30; Grimes et al. 2002: 80; for additional ex-
amples, see Phillips and Idiens 1994: 33 n. 19–20).
Absent from the Brunswick collections are twined
48
Fig. 6 Frame drum, identified at the time of its acquisition by the
museum as one of two “Indian army kettle drums.” SMB cat.no. 87
(Unger coll.). Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy of Städtisches Museum,
Braunschweig).
6. Of two cradleboard models once in the Ducal museum (now
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, hereinafter “HAUM”), only one sur-
vived to be transferred to the SMB; a pair of snowshoes (HAUM cat.no.
1268) also did not survive until 1899 and may likewise have been a
model only. Two models of toboggans (SMB cat.nos AIVb 209a, b
[HAUM cat.nos 1269–1270] are plain and without attached burden-
straps; a similar model from Darmstadt (HLMD cat.no. 1842.444) has
a painted design and includes a burdenstrap decorated with imitation
wampum glass beads. All these models were probably parts of furnish-
ings of canoe models (cp. Brasser 1976: 134, #123; Phillips and Idiens
1994: fig. 1).
7. A “River Desert Algonkin (Maniwaki)” cradleboard model collect-
ed before 1779, formerly in the Speyer collection (Benndorf and Speyer
1968: 75, Abb. 41) and now in Berlin (cat.no. IVB 12815) is also much
like the ones in Brunswick and Darmstadt (no cat.no.; erroneously
dated in Völger [1976: 4.30.24] to “ca. 1880”). Since the Algonquins of
Lake of Two Mountains moved to Maniwaki Reserve only in 1854 (Day
1978: 790), the “River Desert” attribution apparently represents an
attempt by Benndorf and Speyer to translate an original “Lake of Two
Mountains” provenance into modern terms. For the “Jeune Lorette”
model, see Benndorf and Speyer (1968: 62, Abb. 29).
8. Two birchbark canoe models with two and four dolls, respectively,
were transferred in 1899 from the HAUM (cat.nos. 1267, 1266) to the
SMB (cat.nos. AIVb 213–214), but only the latter and two of the dolls
have survived. Phillips (1999: 82–86, pl. 7; Phillips and Idiens 1994:
24–25, fig. 1, 33 n. 19), who identifies these models as Ursuline convent
work, illustrates an example from the Farquharson collection and refers
to several other specimens in public and private collections, including
one from the Ducal collection in Darmstadt (no cat.no.; misattributed
by Völger 1976: 4.20.12 to the “Naskapi, ca. 1850”). The Speyer collec-
tion featured additional dolls from another such canoe model, said to have
been collected before 1779 among the “River Desert Algonkin” (Benn-
dorf and Speyer 1968: 74–75, Abb. 41), which are virtually identical with
the dolls in Brunswick. See also the stylistically different dolls from
“Jeune Lorette” formerly in the Speyer collection and now in the
Canadian Museum of Civilization (Benndorf and Speyer 1968: 62,
Abb. 29), which are accepted by Phillips (1999: 86, fig. 3.10) as early
examples of Native work.
Fig. 7 Pipe with long wooden stem with incised designs and white
glass bead inlays, partly wrapped with plaited quill bands; the grey stone
head depicting a bird’s head facing the smoker also has white glass bead
inlays. HAUM cat.no. 1262. Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy of Herzog
Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig).
burdenstraps with moosehair false embroidery. Of two ex-
amples presumably collected by Hessian mercenaries and
now in Darmstadt, one (HLMD cat.no. E 29:4) is very
closely related to the 1746 “Kahnawake” prisoner tie in
the Deerfield Memorial Hall Museum (Grimes et al.
2002: 79; Flynt 2004: 53–55, fig. 5)9 and is also probably
of Mohawk origin. This may be equally true of a second
one (HLMD cat.no. 1842.200; Fig. 3), although the possi-
ble stylistic differences between various groups of makers in
the St. Lawrence River valley are still little understood.
9. See also Krickeberg (1954: 156, Taf. 35b), Völger (1976: 4.30.21),
and Phillips (in Harrison et al. 1987b: 49, #W55).
10. The drums are from the Unger collections, and thus were not (as
Berlo and Phillips [1998: 92] claim) part of the Kunstkammer of Duke
Anton Ulrich, which, however, according to the late-eighteent century
inventory of the Ducal Museum did include another “so-called Indian
magic drum. It is said to be covered witz himan skin.”
11. There are also two pottery pipe heads at the municipal museum in
Brunswick, and a stone pipe head at the Brunswick State Museum.
12. One scalp each is from the old Ducal collection (SMB cat.no. AIVb
210, HAUM cat.no. 1264) and from the Unger collection (SMB cat.no.
AIVb 92). The oldest scalp preserved in a museum appears to be an
example from the Sloan collection in the British Museum (King 1999:
60, fig. 56). Another eighteenth-century scalp in Cambridge is attached
to a club (King 1993: 45, fig. 22).
13. As in the case of the scalps, one each is from the old Ducal collec-
tion and from the Unger collection (SMB cat.no. AIVb 29 [Unger];
AIVb 207 [HAUM cat.no. 1263). See also Benndorf and Speyer (1968:
94), Ewing (1982: 147, #118), and the piece now in Göttingen (Fig. 8;
cp. note 3). A different type, with screw--on bowl is in the Du Roi col-
lection (Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, hereinafter “BLM,” cat.no.
VM 7248).
14. A possible exception is a ball-headed club, now in Gatineau (III-X-
236), presumably from the late eighteenth-/early nineteenth century
Blumenbach collection in Göttingen (Sturtevant 2001: 178).
15. SMB cat.no. AIVb 218 (HAUM 1247). Among the lost dress items
was a “pair of arm or leg bands plaited of colored quills and decorated
with small fringes of hair in sheet metal cones” (HAUM cat.no. 1249).
Fig. 8 Pipe tomahawk with steel-edged brass blade. Völkerkunde-
Sammlung, Universität Göttingen, cat.no. Am 432a (“old collection”).
Photograph: C. F. Feest.
Ceremonialism is represented by two frame drums
(Fig. 5) and a long-stemmed tobacco pipe (Fig. 6), while
three other pipes were apparently made for non-ceremo-
nial use. The drums10 were published nearly a century ago
by Richard Andree (1899), who tentatively identified them
as Algonquian, which in a broad sense is probably correct;
the pipe seems to be of Western Great Lakes origin.11
The domain of war, which one should think was of
special importance to the soldiers, is only represented by
two scalps and three pipe tomahawks. The scalps are
among the earliest specimens preserved in museum col-
lections;12 the type of tomahawk with a steel-edged brass
blade was only briefly popular during the late eighteenth
century (Woodward 1946: 13; Peterson 1965: 36–37,
122–124, figs. 209–219; cp. Fig. 8).13 Most remarkable is
the absence of wooden clubs.14
The only piece for which the records supply a tribal
identification is problematic on two accounts. One is that
the description in the eighteenth-century inventory does
not completely match the object it is presently identified
with: “The dress of a Huron. It is made of moose hide,
garnished with marten fur and has ornaments made of
the bast of feather quills.”15 While the quills are clearly
those of the porcupine, this is a lesser concern, since por-
cupine quills are frequently misidentified in early muse-
um records. More serious is the lack of any trace of
marten fur, which probably rules out its identity with the
item described in the catalogue. The second problem is
the unlikelihood of the Huron attribution, based on what
we know about nineteenth-century styles. While the piece
is unusually interesting and—given the diversity of west-
ern allies who made their appearance in the St. Lawrence
49
Fig. 9 Single moccasin with appliqué quillwork (SMB no cat.no, ex
HAUM cat.no. 1253) in style similar to the left knife case in Fig. 10,
attributed to the Abenaki. Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy of Städti-
sches Museum, Braunschweig).
Fig. 10 Moccasins with bands of woven quillwork edged with white
glass beads (SMB no cat.no, ex HAUM cat.no. 1251). Photograph: C. F.
Feest (courtesy of Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig).
valley—could possibly have been collected during the
Revolutionary War, it more likely represents a later, un-
documented addition to the Ducal collection.
Of equally uncertain origin is a single painted legging
in the municipal museum, which was received in 1897
without any documentation (but together with eigh-
teenth-century moosehair work on bark). It is stylistically
early and rather unique.16 An apron from the Patty Frank
collection in the Karl-May-Museum is also undocumented
(Dräger, Krusche, Hoffmann 1992: 31, 49), but the pres-
ence of imitation wampum glass beads clearly places it
into the time period of the Revolutionary War. There are
only few comparable examples and these have never actu-
ally been compared.
Six of the ten documented pairs of moccasins in
Brunswick have survived and not unexpectedly represent
several different styles, none of which can be securely iden-
50
Fig. 11 Two quilled knife cases and a birchbark insert found in the left
specimen. Schlossmuseum, Gotha, cat.nos 1830.264, 265. Photograph:
C. F. Feest.
tified with better known early nineteenth-century moc-
casin styles of the area. Based on the quillwork style and
patterns, I would suggest an Abenaki origin for one (Fig.
9),17 and an Iroquois origin for another pair18 from the
ducal collection.
A third pair (Fig. 10) from the same source19 has bands
of woven quillwork, often associated with the Huron, but
the technique and style had, of course, a much wider dis-
16. SMB AIVb 179 (purchased in 1897; the accompanying pieces of
moosehair-embroidered birchbark had old, but unidentified catalogue
numbers).
17. SMB no cat.no. (ex HAUM cat.no. 1253); cp. e.g., a spectacular
pair in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, cat.no. 1952.5.3.
18. No cat.no. (ex HAUM cat.no. 1250, possibly Iroquois). Other moc-
casin styles are represented by SMB cat.nos. AIVb 82 and 83 (the latter
completely undecorated, both from the Unger coll.), and no cat.no. (ex
HAUM cat.no. 1250). For three further pairs at the HAUM and one at
the BLM, only catalogue entries are still available.
19. SMB no cat.no. (ex HAUM cat.no. 1251). An unusual feature of
this pair is the absence of bands of appliqué quillwork flanking the
woven strips. In this it resembles cat.no. III-H-440 of the Canadian
Museum of Civilization, Hull, QC, and another broadly comparable
pair from the old “Indian chamber” in the Staatliches Museum für
Völkerkunde Dresden (cat.no. 2953).
Fig. 12 Feathered headdress with
quill-wrapped and -plaited decorative
bands. Note the use of mallard skins
underneath the arched central bands
and the use of metal clasps in the lat-
ter’s construction. HLMD cat.no.
E30:11. Photograph: C. F. Feest (cour-
tesy of Hessisches Landesmuseum,
Darmstadt).

tribution. This particular pair has a design identical with
that found on Sir John Caldwell’s moccasins, now in an
American private collection (Ewing 1982: 255, #268; cp.
Brasser 1976: cover)—whatever that may ultimately mean.
A similar diversity is found among the surviving knife-
cases. Du Roi’s fairly simple example (BLM cat.no. VM
7249), edged with imitation wampum, was sent from a
20. The Darmstadt knife case—which is only quilled and not beaded—
has the old number [E29:]3. The inscription reads: “Vagina, quam collo
suspensano habent Indi Iroquaeenses, continendo pugione quo secant
& avellant capillitum derrotorum, belli trophaeum, ex pennis hystricis
confecta”; Völger (1976: 4.20.34) misattributes it to the “Northern
Algonquin, ca. 1820.”
21. The two Gotha knife cases appear together on an 1830 inventory in
numerical sequence with a moosehair-embroidered reticule, a billet-fold,
and a case for scissors, all of them said to have been obtained from the
“Abinakis at Trois Rivières.” The birchbark artifacts and at least the
knife case hgere attributed to the Abenaki also appeared together on a
pre-1804 inventory referred to by the later catalogue.
22. Although citing the paper in which I presented a case against an
Iroquoian attribution of two-lane quill-plaited knife cases, and without
offering any new and convincing arguments, Phillips and Idiens (1994:
28–29, fig. 6) persist in perpetuating what I believe to be an erroneous
attribution.
23. The Darmstadt headdress (cat.no. E 30: 11) is called “Iroquoian”
in an early printed guide to the museum (Walther 1844). Although it
represents a clearly distinct subtype, it is obviously related to other eigh-
teenth-century headdresses with quill-wrapped and -plaited bands, such
as the one from the Caldwell collection (cp. Brasser 1976: cover), iden-
tified by Benndorf and Speyer (1968: 94–96, Taf. XI) as Ojibwa. Further
examples are in the Farquharson collection (Phillips and Idiens 1994:
30–31, fig. 9; attributed by them to the eastern Ojibwa [Mississauga])
and in the University Museum of Anthropology, Cambridge (cat.no.
1922.979, ex Leverian Museum; King 1993: 38–39, fig. 13). The range
of styles of Eastern Great Lakes feathered headbands is further illustrat-
ed by the examples shown by Idiens (2007: figs. 5, 6) and Einhorn and
Abler 1996).
camp at the Richelieu River. A rather different type is rep-
resented by a sheath from the old collection in Darm-
stadt, which has a Latin label in presumably eighteenth-
century handwriting, identifying it as the case for an Iro-
quois scalping knife.20 One has, of course, to recognize
that “Iroquois” was as generic a term in the eighteenth
century as “Sioux” would be in the nineteenth.
Two other knifecases in Gotha were presumably also
collected at the time of the American Revolution (Fig. 11;
Feest 1987: 290–296, color plate). One of them features
the very narrow bands of quillwork associated with Abe-
naki work(wo)manship; and both are associated in the
oldest surviving inventory with moosehair-embroidered
birchbark specifically said to have been obtained from the
“Abinakis at Trois Rivières.”21 I have elsewhere argued
against the traditional, but unfounded attribution of
knifecases with quill-wrapped bark slats to the Mohawk,
and have suggested a more northern or western origin
(Feest 1987: 296).22 The quill-plaiting characteristic of this
type is also found on headdresses, such as the one from
Darmstadt (Fig. 12).23
Two quilled drawstring pouches in the Du Roi and
Unger collections and one formerly in the Ducal Museum
in Darmstadt have been placed in a wider comparative
perspective by Sylvia Kasprycki (1997). She suggests a
Western Abenaki origin for the Du Roi piece, and at least
does not want to exclude the same provenance for the
other two, whose quillwork styles closely resemble that of
the Gotha knifecase from Trois Rivières.
Another bag from the Du Roi set is distinguished by

51

Fig. 13 Rectangular buckskin and cloth pouch decorated with
appliqué quillwork and imitation wampum glass beads (BLM cat.no.
VM 7250, ex Du Roi coll.). Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy of Braun-
schweigisches Landesmuseum).
its extensive use of imitation wampum beads (Fig. 13).24
Both myself (Feest 1980: 120) and Ruth Phillips (in Harri-
son et al. 1987a: 85; 1987b: 48, #W50) have identified
this as Iroquoian. While this is still possible, I am less con-
vinced of this attribution than I was twenty years ago; ar-
chaeological evidence indicates that at least among the
Seneca green beads were apparently rare or absent (Wray
1983).
A particular strength of the Brunswick collections
from the American Revolution are moosehair-embroidered
pieces of birchbark.25 As on the unusual two knifecases
from the Unger collection (cp. Phillips 1991: 20, fig. 2;
1999: 112, fig. 4.6), purely floral and pictorial styles ap-
pear side by side, both of which are commonly identified
as Huron work, although the styles were obviously more
widespread.
More importantly, Brunswick has one of the largest
collections of moosehair-embroidered birchbark of a style
that did not survive into the nineteenth century and is
most often found on the bottom of women’s reticules
(Fig. 14; also Phillips 1991: 23, fig. 6; cp. Phillips 1999:
52
Fig. 13 Birchbark base of reticule with moosehair embroidery (SMB
cat.no. AIVb 77, ex Köckys coll.). Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy of
Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig).
113, fig. 4.7, 117, fig. 4.10, pl. 14). It is characterized by
solid white backgrounds and a vivid pictorialism. Ruth
24. Closely comparable examples are in the British Museum (cat.no.
Ethno 1878.11-1.625, S. R. Meyrick coll., no provenance; King 1982:
66–67, fig. 72a), in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St.
Petersburg (cat.no. 1901-6, transferred from the Russian Geographical
Society in 1889, no provenance; cp. Zibert 1975: 23–24, 30, Tab. 2.4),
and in the Peabody Museum, Harvard University (cat.no. 288, said to
be from Quebec, donated in 1792 to the Massachusetts Historical
Society by a Mr. Freeman). Similar straps on different types of pouches
are found in the Musée du quai Branly, Paris (cat.no. 71.1878.32.142,
Bibliothèque Nationale coll., with a documented eighteenth-century
date), in the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle et d’Ethnographie, Lille (cat.
no. 999-2-3316, no documentation), in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et
d’Archéologie de Besançon (cat.nos. 853.50.74–75, undocumented, but
associated with eighteenth-century material from French North America;
Lagrange and Dubois 1992: 110), and in the Musée d’Ethnographie,
Geneva (cat.no. K437, Dunand coll., no provenance, acquired in 1874),
all of which favor an origin within the French sphere of influence in
northeastern North America.
The linked pairs of diamonds are interpreted on Iroquois wampum
belts to refer to unity and friendship, but the design is equally found on
non-Iroquoian belts as well as on non-ceremonial items in many parts of
the Great Lakes region.
25. The material presently available in Brunswick includes two knife
cases (SMB cat.nos AIVb 85, 90, Unger coll.), seven reticule bottoms (of
which only two have a documented eighteeenth-century provenance:
SMB cat.no. AIVb 211 [HAUM cat.no. 1273] and HAUM cat.no. 1274;
the remaining five were acquired between 1866 and 1897 apparently
from descendants of soldiers who had served in America: SMB cat.nos
AIVb 8 [ex Röbber-Hantelmann coll.], 77–78 [ex Köckys coll.], 180–181
[no collection information]), and four pieces of unfinished work
(HAUM cat.no. 1281; cp. Phillips 1999: 110, fig. 4.4). Losses of eigh-
teenth-century material previously at the HAUM (cat.nos 1275–1280)
include a box, a heart-shaped pouch, a scissors case, a case for glasses,
and two hearts (perhaps pin cushions).
Phillips (1991; 1999: 104–109), building upon the research
by Marius Barbeau, concludes that most of these works
were produced in the Ursuline convents at Trois Rivières
and (later) Quebec City; but the transition to unques-
tionably Native moosehair-embroidered birchbark is diffi-
cult to understand without the assumption of a gradual
involvement of Native women throughout the eighteenth
century.
This cursory glance at German collections from the
time of the American Revolution has illustrated the tran-
sition from the old Kunst- und Wunderkammer collect-
ing to the new contextual and taxonomic mode which at
least in theory became prevalent after the second half of
the eighteenth century. The extensive collecting both in
terms of artifact types and sheer numbers as well as the
higher rate of preservation are clearly indicative of the
new trend. Especially Brunswick collectors like Du Roi
also provide examples for the natural history-inspired
kind of ethnographic documentation based on comple-
mentary written observations, drawings, and specimens.
Much to our regret, the important feature of taxonomic
identification of artifacts by ethnic group was generally
neglected, perhaps (or so it seems) because “Indians” then
still appeared to be a sufficiently specific term of classifi-
cation.
Our survey has also revealed the significant stylistic
differences between artifacts of the second half of the
eighteenth and those of the nineteenth century, which
makes it difficult, if not impossible, to use the method of
“upstreaming” from the known to the unknown. The nec-
essary task of identifying and classifying these important
early artifacts, which are now widely scattered in different
repositories on both sides of the Atlantic, remains an im-
portant but difficult task.
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