Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

The people of some North American tribes maintain their distinct dressing styles well into the 1900's. This photo shows such an example, taken by a studio photographer in Calgary around 1910. It shows Jonas Dixon, a young Stoney man, with his wife. Both are dressed in their finest clothing for this portrait session. She has on a woolen dress, a white canvas apron, a fringed and plaid Scottish shawl, and a flowered scarf. He wears fully beaded moccasins, a fringed pair of smoked buckskin leggings, a long breechcloth decorated with many colors of ribbons, a decorated shirt and cloth vest, and a dance roach of porcupine and deer hair on his head. The bead bandolier bag over his shoulder is decorated with weasels and other animal skins that represented the sacred powers of his dreams, which came from his outdoor life. Around his neck is a conch shell choker with a necklace of deerhorn tips, made in imitation of grizzly claws. When Jonas Dixon gave me this photo of himself in 1975, he had on a pair of faded jeans, work boots, and a flannel shirt. He said it was easy in his young days to go around dressed traditionally, because many of his Stoney People still did, partly because there weren't a lot of strangers in their country then.