Shoulder bag (missing strap)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The images on this black-dyed bag, traditionally used to hold amulets and other personal possessions, are part of the pictorial language of Great Lakes cultures. The figures and abstractions express a complex universe alive with seen and unseen forces. In 1845 the Anishinaabe Methodist minister Peter Jones wore the pouch in Edinburgh, posing for a group of photographs that are considered the earliest of an identified Native North American. The strap is now missing.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art