Style show features princess dress

This is a followup to last Sunday’s column, with additional details about the regalia featured in the style show presented by Osage elder Margaret Bird to Tulsa tourists at the Community Center in Pawhuska on Oct. 26.

Rosemary Wood wore a Cherokee tear dress and carried a shawl and a tulip bag. The dress is called a tear dress because originally these dresses were constructed from torn pieces of fabric, Margaret Bird said.

Carol Revard wore a Sioux dress made of wool broadcloth with a scarf and carried a shawl, fan and wore blue beaded moccasins.

“This is a heavy dress because it has a bone necklace,” Bird said. “The original Sioux breastplate is made of foraged bones. Her dress is also embellished with elk teeth molars.”

Julie Karen Lookout wore contemporary formal Osage clothing with silk red blouse and a ribbonwork skirt, Osage moccasins, a pin and a necklace of bone and beads.

Erica Kemohah wore an Oklahoma princess style buckskin dress with cut beads. Such dresses are worn in princess competitions statewide, Bird said. Since she is Osage, Kemohah wore a ribbon with a pin, her leggings, carried a shawl and a fan. It is an honor for Osage women to have a white tail feather from a bald eagle in their fan, Bird said. The dress had beaded red hands on the pale buckskin.

“My family is the OnHands. I dedicate this to Evelyn OnHand Pitts, my aunt, and my mother, Louise May Bellmyer Brown, because they have been a huge influence all my life helping me with my collection. And, I appreciate Joan McCauley who accompanies me to the style shows,” Bird said.

“Sometimes when I make something, I will bead underneath a little hand. That’s my signature,” Bird said.

Julie Karen Lookout said, “I’ll tell you what Mark told me about where the OnHand name comes from. There were Indian cowboys and they said, ‘we’ve got these guys over here on hand,’ and they named them that.”

Paula Stabler, an Osage congresswoman, wore a Delaware buckskin dress, wrap-around skirt, moccasins and carried a tulip bag.

“Most tribes from the East will carry a bag like this,” Bird said.

Additional style show descriptions will continue in next week’s history column.