Here’s another thing I’m having a hard time getting out of my head. These two pictures represent a single bag. The first is a pattern created by weaving the inner leaves of corn husks. The colors are probably yarn wrapped along the threads. The second image is the reverse side of the bag and is made of beads.

The bag is for sale for $2100.00 which I find both amusing and deeply distressing. According to the sale site the bag is from the late 1800s.  It’s Nez Perce. I cannot but help think of the hands that made it, that killed the deer, that tanned the hide, that traded for the beads, the needles, the thread, that sat for months wrapping and weaving the corn husks. And it is so very beautiful. I wonder if the person who buys it will go to a dance, will carry it on the floor and use it to bring themselves and their family good fortune, or if it will go in a locked collection somewhere. And I wonder what family created it – which one of the families still in Nez Perce country are the descendants of the hands that made this possible.

The thing that is amusing is that there was a point when this stuff was considered worthless, at best a token of a vanishing race. Anyway, enough gloom. What really catches me is its beauty. That’s the thing that really sticks.