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Traditional early Sioux beaded doll featuring a button and ribbon dress. This artifact is highly prized, historically significant that perfectly mirror the reservation-era material transitions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
When Plains women transitioned from sewing hide dresses to using European trade cloth for their own clothing, mothers and grandmothers simultaneously miniaturing these exact styles for their children's toys. A period-accurate, authentic early Sioux doll with a button dress typically exhibits several defining characteristics:
1. The Exposed Hide: She is wearing a trade cloth dress. Her head, hands, and high-top moccasins and body are crafted from finely worked, brain-tanned deer or elk buckskin.
2. Miniature deep indigo blue Button and ribbon dress is made of old woolen trade cloth. She is hand stitched. She is adorned with long beaded earrings. One side of the earrings has 1 long earring and the other side has 2 as the string just broke on one side. She also has tubular beads sewn onto her dress.
3. This doll was a genuine plaything or deeply sentimental family item. This authentic reservation-era example (circa 1880–1910) is incredibly rare. In the antique market today.
