Unknown Maker, Apsáalooke (Crow)

Indian children spent most of their first two years in a cradle, which served as a crib, playpen, carriage and highchair. Cradles were often prepared by one of the child's female relatives, an aunt or grandmother, and their elaborate ornamentation attests to the love of a child by its parents and relatives. These two cradles are beautiful examples of the late nineteenth century beader' s art. The Crow cradle is beaded in a style typical of the Indians of the Plateau or Transmontane at the end of the nineteenth century, in which designs remained similar to older patterns used on raw hide parfleches. The Kiowa cradle is beaded in a representational style which developed on the Plains around 1885, when Indian women began to depict representational scenes formerly reserved for men in painting and pipe stone sculpture.