Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Tobacco Bag
Not on view
The powerful images on this bag are simple and direct—iconic symbols of a warrior’s achievements. Hoofprints, representing horse raids, embellish the blue-painted upper panels. Below, the pair of severed heads symbolizes slain enemies. On the reverse, the pair of hands indicates additional war honors. By the late 1800s, bead workers had generally abandoned the type of early symbolic representations seen on this bag in favor of beadwork that replicated pictographic narrative painting.
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