Cigar Case

Surrounded by curving foliage, the birds on this birch bark cigar case lift their chests and raise their beaks. Every feather and leaf is carefully embroidered—not with thread, but with dyed moose hair—likely by a Huron-Wendat woman. With the formalization of the tourist industry along the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes in the 19th century, more non-Native people sought to collect souvenirs like this one made by Indigenous artists. Although these artists were part of a sophisticated, international economy, many tourists and settlers perceived their communities as simpler and more wholesome than the industrialized centers of England and Europe. The idealized Indigenous figure on the right, holding a pipe and sitting next to a campfire, suggests how Huron-Wendat people may have used such stereotypes to market their work.