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
A female artist created this bag, used to hold tobacco and sometimes a pipe and a stem. An important man would have carried it on formal occasions. Lakota people called such bags cantohuja, container for the heart, in reference to the sacredness of the pipe. Until the 1850s, when smaller and more variously colored seed beads became the preferred medium, simple designs in blue, white, and black pony beads embellished these bags, which were produced throughout the north-central Plains.
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