In his book, Arapaho Women’s Quillwork: Motion, Life and Creativity, Jeffrey D. Anderson offers a historical analysis of the meaning of the art form, how the objects tie into Arapaho myths, and how the quillwork designs are being used in Arapaho culture today. Within “quill societies” a woman’s “personhood” and achievements were manifested by how well she manipulated the material and passed on traditional knowledge. He also argues that quillwork was and still is “closely tied to core rituals and mythological events” (6). For example, quillwork was a pertinent aspect of dancers’ costumes and movements for sacred ceremonies like the Sun Dance and the beyoowu’u.
Female-created quillwork provided symbolic importance to everyday objects such as tipis, cradles, and pillows that protected kinfolk and the tribal village. Women working with quills reduced the negative or positive power of the quill; for example, if the quills touched the skin, they could travel through the body and affect vital organs. Likewise, in The Four Hills of Life: Northern Arapaho Knowledge and Life Movement (2001), Anderson asserts that the objects made by the quill societies offered guidance to tribal members along the Four Hills of Life, i.e., childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age (28). Lastly, Anderson defines how Arapaho quillwork is placed within the revitalization of the culture as well as its marginalized position in the Euro-American art market, museum-curating sphere, and museum archival collections.
The author’s art-historical and anthropological approach uses a mixture of second-hand literature from material culture, oral history, and design, along with first-hand ethnography from Northern Arapaho tribal members. As mentioned in Kroeber (1901: 309), simple designs such as lines, circles, isosceles and equilateral triangles, and squares, were combined on a piece of cloth or structure in order to tell a story or to pass on oral history through pictograms. This visual data gives a pictorial and descriptive representation of quillwork while explaining the historical and present-day importance of this craft form. Anderson’s effort in this publication showcases material from private collections, archives, unpublished data, field notes, and accession records from the Warden-Dorsey collection at the Field Museum, as well as assessments of material collections in large and small museums, from the National Museum of the American Indian to the Denver Art Museum. Highly-detailed color and black-and-white photos showcase the beautiful and intricate handiwork of the Arapaho quillwork designs.
Previous academic research from Candace Green (1992), Marsha Bol (1996, 2001), and Adrianne Santina (2004), to name a few, facilitated “one-to-one form-meaning relations” and a “referential function of form” that only focuses on the physical aspects of quillwork as does the Western conception of art (21-22). Anderson emphasizes a departure from this “under-interpreted” assessment of quillwork (29). This book is not just Anderson’s “outside” interpretation of quillwork, but is combined with the efforts of local Arapaho tribal members that he “identified with” to tell the story of Arapaho quillwork (19).
The lengthy introduction of this book details the previous work developed by academic scholars, mostly within anthropology, ethnography, and philosophy, such as Clifford Geertz, Marcel Mauss, and Alfred Kroeber. He gives a thorough discussion at the end of this section on the philosophical meaning of the art form in respect to Western concepts. Through the theories of Merleau-Ponty whom Anderson uses to describe quillwork as a form of “embodied knowledge,” or his own term, “life movement,” we understand that quillwork is an art that is passed down from one person to another by movement, and therefore has immense religious importance (24). Anderson also uses semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of firstness to explain the combination of artistic form and motion. Anderson cites many theorists in his argument about the validity of quillwork as well as its importance to the Arapaho, but there should have been more of a focus on the Arapaho point of view on their sacred art form.
Chapters 1 and 2 provide an overview of the types of quillwork produced by the Arapaho such as cradles, tipis, ornaments, robes, and leanback covers. Both chapters offer a detailed explanation of structural meanings, symbolic interpretations, or “paths.” This section includes material from the unpublished manuscripts of Cleaver Warden, a researcher of Arapaho descent who helped Dorsey and Kroeber produce salvage ethnography for the Field Museum. Anderson notes that without Warden’s objective interpretative data on Arapaho quillwork they would have been reduced to using “modern critical caricatures of salvage anthropology” (19).
Chapter 2 looks at the meanings of quillwork objects, dispelling many of the theories and assertions of ethnographic data compiled by Kroeber and Warden. This section offers detailed explanations of the intricate nuances of each symbolic design within temporal dimensions. For example, straight lines are associated with a long life, while the circle can symbolize the sun, head, or brain, as well as the completion of the Four Hills of Life (78-79). Chapter 4 describes how quillwork designs manifest themselves within mythical traditions, as well as the symbolic relationships between humans, animals, and nature. For example, the Painted Porcupine story shows women how to use the different colors of the porcupine to make the correct symbols on the material. Chapter 5 describes the Four Hills of Life that exemplify major life changes and rites of passage. Chapter 6 revisits the material introduced in the introduction of this book, namely, comparative anthropological research on quillwork production and the meanings thereof. The appendix gives the orthography of the Arapaho alphabet and a few diphthongs.
Anderson offers us a detailed appreciation of an art form that is normally overlooked by historians, anthropologists, and museums. Though the Arapaho have chosen not to continue quillwork production, we are still able to learn about the ritualistic symbols created through beadwork and painting, and this is a great joy. Most Arapaho have decided not to create sacred designs that were “lost,” “for the lines of succession for passing on the ceremonies and knowledge have been irreparably cut” (8). The designs of the Arapaho quillwork have such meaning and depth that it would be a shame to lose this form. Fortunately, we learn that other tribal nations, like the Gros Ventre and the Cheyenne, still produce quillwork objects, so the intricacies are never truly lost due to non-production by the Arapaho.
I believe that Anderson’s work is needed in the field of Native American material culture as well as Arapaho religious culture. Though it is interesting, the appendix seems to have nothing to do with material culture, but rather with linguistics and oral culture. Nonetheless, this book is a valuable addition to material culture specialists in the social sciences and historical fields.
Works Cited
Anderson, Jeffrey D. 2001. The Four Hills of Life: Northern Arapaho Knowledge and Life Movement. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Kroeber, Alfred. 1901. “Decorative Symbolism of the Arapaho.” American Anthropologist 3: 308-336.
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[Review length: 1130 words • Review posted on September 5, 2013]