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
Porcupine quillwork, an art form unique to North American Indians, is featured on this early bag. The painted symbols and Thunderbird in the quillwork panel reference ritual pipe smoking and the use of tobacco as an act of prayer. Similar bags inspired those made on the Great Plains a century later. In 1721, a French trader, missionary, or military man labeled the bag an “artificial curiosity” and sent it to France from the Canadian colonies.
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