154

Beaded Arapaho Dress

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:20,000.00 USD Estimated At:50,000.00 - 70,000.00 USD
Beaded Arapaho Dress
58” x 41” nicely beaded in red, green and yellow on a light blue field with rows of stacked triangles and a border at base of yoke, the dress is fine native tanned hide. Fine condition with minor bead loss, c 1870

Arapaho dresses are the rarest of dresses. Often mis-read as Sioux, the Arapaho design on native tanned hide is straighter down the sides with the sleeves also less tapered, as this fine example shows. There were so few made that the Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian) only has one example, a lesser piece of three quarters size.