(ca. 1750-1800) Indian Trade Silver. A single brooch consisting of four silver ring brooches connected by a piece of hide. Silver and Hide. Constituent rings 10.1 mm in diameter and scyphate in form. The four-piece brooch, with hide connective strap, weighs 24 grains. Unmarked, maker unknown. One of the ring brooches is now separated from the other three, pinned to a red ribbon and card reading "No. 1. This brooch is one of 500 worn by Red Jacket as embroidery to his buck skin coat, and original obtained from an Algonquin captive. - - $5.50."<p>This form of ring brooch is a somewhat unusual, smaller than normally encountered with this simple circular form, but with a broad ring surrounding a small circular opening at center. Beauchamp illustrates a few annular brooches of similar size, but none quite like this. Of course, Beauchamps depictions highlight the individual ornaments, so none are presented in this distinctive form, a foursome lashed together with a strip of hide. The rings are all perfectly preserved, retaining their original pins and displaying a fine dark gray patina.<p>This object, as with the others herein offered, trace their provenance to Frederick Ward Putnam, the "father of American archaeology" and a longtime curator of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, among other institutions. Putnam was well acquainted with the circle of Red Jackets descendants: his colleague Lewis Henry Morgan was the longtime confidant and friend of Ely S. Parker, Red Jackets nephews grandson and inheritor of his prized Washington Oval Indian Peace medal. Parkers grand-nephew, Dr. Arthur Caswell Parker, was Putnams star student and a legendary archaeologist in his own right. Just how Putnam came to possess these relics of the great Seneca chief Red Jacket (ca. 1750-1830) is unknown, nor could we offer a story of how Red Jackets brooch became the property of an "Algonquin captive," but Putnams connection to Red Jackets line suggests that the provenance may hold some truth. The object is unquestionably of the period of Red Jackets lifetime, and the cards suggestion that hundreds of these small brooches would have been embroidered onto a coat is an accurate description of how they were worn. A famous Seneca dress, worn at the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua and now in the collection of the Heye Foundation, is similarly embroidered with many dozens of small silver brooches of various shapes and forms.<p>Simple and elegant, these small ring brooches could have been made by nearly any silversmith anywhere, but tended to be produced by prolific shops who could churn out hundreds or thousands of these for sale at a single time.
