View other artifacts: Cradle Hood Indian Doll

Learn more about three Native American artifacts
in need of conservation in our Adopt-an-Artifact program

Three artifacts in the Kansas City Museum’s Dyer Collection of Native American artifacts have been selected by Museum staff as candidates for conservation, supported by the Friends organization. This ‘octopus’ bag is a significant piece in the collection and needs substantial work to preserve its integrity.

We appreciate your interest in this valuable work, and invite you to make a tax-deductible gift to support the conservation of this piece in the Dyer Collection of the Kansas City Museum.

Conservation work on the Octopus Bag is complete. Learn more >>

‘Octopus’ bags were named for the wide cloth fringe resembling the tentacles of an octopus, usually comprising eight points. This type of bag was worn for special occasions by the men of the tribe around the neck and shoulders. Octopus bags were used throughout tribes in what is now the upper United States, from the Great Lakes to Alaska, and Canada. This bag is significant for its rarity and age—few early bags remain—but it is the only octopus bag in the Dyer Collection.

Physical description:
A beaded bag of black wool, rectangular in shape with an attached strap handle and overlapping flaps at the bottom. The bag has an overall floral pattern made of glass beads in pink, yellow, light blue, green, orange, white and clear; flaps have columns of yellow and white flowers on brown, and clear glass leaves with white stems. The other sides of the flaps have yellow and pink flowers and/or circles of clear glass beads. The background of these patterned areas is of silk. The bag is topped by a wide cloth and beaded strap for handle. From a Prairie tribe (unidentified).


Condition:
The bag is unstable due to its age and the deteriorating fabrics holding it together. The silk is deteriorating and the cotton thread attaching the bead trim is breaking down in several places with a loss of beads and several more that are very loose.

Recommended treatment:
     Stabilize fabrics
     Strengthen beads—replace thread
     Replace lost beads
     Clean


About the Dyer Collection
Daniel Dyer and his wife Ida moved to what was then Indian Territory (modern day Oklahoma) in 1870. Dyer was first a clerk and then the Indian Agent at the Quapaw Agency, before moving to the Darlington Agency near Ft. Reno in 1884, while Ida served as a schoolteacher. Mrs. Dyer began collecting items from members of several tribes who had been moved off their lands to the fort; in some instances she purchased items she liked, other times she simply took what she liked, thinking of herself as a sort of anthropologist more than simply a collector of curios. The collection was fought over in court on more than one occasion but finally found a home at the Kansas City Museum in 1940.
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