Woodland Indians Forum

This book is excellent Ray! I read it once before but now I'm going to read it again.

Here's a photograph of who we think is Margaret Adams (d.1931) (Mattapony living with the Pamunkey), in the 1920's, wearing a feather cape she made.  (We might call this a feather boa, today?)  I don't think this picture is in this book.  It used to be in the Smithsonian, and it's still listed there, but it doesn't show up when called for.  It has evidently been misplaced or lost during the transition to the Museum of the American Indian.  In any case, we have it!

Just butting in on the feather capes.

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawo … .asp?bio=3

Mollie Holmes Adams
(1881-1973)
KING WILLIAM COUNTY
UPPER MATTAPONI LEADER

Mollie Wade Holmes Adams (October 8, 1881–December 14, 1973) grew up in King William County in the Adamstown (later the Upper Mattaponi) Indian community. She faced the same hardships as her neighbors, including poverty, difficulty in attaining education, and the racism of outsiders. In 1900 she married Jasper Lewis Adams, who served as chief of the Upper Mattaponi from 1923 to 1973. Mollie Adams joined her husband as a leader of the tribe as he facilitated the purchase and construction of the Sharon Indian School in 1919 and the Indian View Baptist Church in 1942.

Raising her twelve children, Adams faced the bigotry of Walter A. Plecker’s management of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics. Plecker systematically worked to reclassify all Virginia Indians as “Negro” or “colored” and therefore relegate them to the same racist laws to which African Americans were subject. In a counter move to Plecker’s claims against the Indians, several white men signed a statement certifying Adams’s Indian ancestry.

Turkey feather cape made by Mollie Holmes Adams. Image courtesy of Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.
Despite this adversity, Adams was a tribal elder and passed on the almost-lost skill of feather weaving. She aided anthropologists by allowing her picture to be published in one study and by explaining her herbal remedies to researchers. Adams built a strong base for the modern Upper Mattaponi through her church and tribal activism. Her son Andrew Washington Adams was chief of the Upper Mattaponi from 1974 to 1985, and her grandson, Kenneth Adams, is the current chief.

James Mooney of the Smithsonian visited the Powhatan groups in 1900. He took about a dozen photographs, including  this one of a Mattaponi group: http://sirismm.si.edu/naa/baegn/gn_00851a.jpg.

The woman is wearing some sort of feather collar.

tk
Esimotsoraivo

tk wrote:

James Mooney of the Smithsonian visited the Powhatan groups in 1900. He took about a dozen photographs, including  this one of a Mattaponi group: http://sirismm.si.edu/naa/baegn/gn_00851a.jpg.

The woman is wearing some sort of feather collar.

tk
Esimotsoraivo

I can't view this one, it may just be me though.

ETA: I got it, thanks tk!

Suckachsinheet wrote:

tree hugger wrote:

Just butting in on the feather capes.

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawo … .05.72.jpg

That's pretty much what Mike Taffe's feather cape looks like, but I think it is missing the cloth lining. The feathers are woven into a net. It has been many years since I have seen it up close, so I may be forgetting the fine details.

He got that idea from Grandpop Buster, who also had one. I have a old picture of Buster wearing it but I never knew where it came from until now.

Strachey gives the Powhatan word, puttawus, as "a covering or mantle made of feathers."  The word has not survived with this specific meaning in Lenape; however it could very well have been modern Munsee's word, pihtawusuw, "it is in layers" (referring to the overlapping of the rows of feathers).

(Note:  "Powhatan" is a catch-all used to denominate all the Virginia Algonquian dialects.)