Let's spark this up: leggings and breach clout

[Mark]

I know the arguments against and let me add I do not wear them: AJ Miller never painted any on his subjects; You did not want to be mistaken for an Indian, etc. But...From the literature that is extent, a majority of those spending any amount of time in the business had native wifes, at least for some amount of time. Leggings and clout were what these women know most. Yes they were able to sew whatever was asked of them. Would the old boy have adapted to her culture or her to his?

Also remember that a very large percentage of trapper were French Canadian, coming out of the north. These men were issued legging and clout as part of their annual wages. They were familiar and accustomed to this wear.

Back to AJ Miller. Most of his time with Stewart would have been on the trail coming or going back to St. Louis. Would most of his subjects have been the men hired in St. L as part of Stewart hired help? This would explain the pucker toe moccasins. Would it also explain pantaloons instead of leggings?

I am not saying pantaloons were not the prominent leg coverings. Just seems leggings and clout would have been in there more than we see in Miller's paintings.

This not a new discussion it has been around many times. But it always fires up the troops. Okay have at it. What are your thoughts?

Mark

[sean]

I figure that the western fur trade was a big place and time with a whole lot of people from diverse backgrounds. Was Jed Smith wearing a clout and leggings? Likely not. How about Bill Williams? Maybe. How about John Grey, or Manhead? Likely. How about Black Beaver? Definitely.

Sean

[sean]

Doug,

I think Washington might be a bit of a stretch for a source when considering the use of the the clout in the western fur trade.

Sean

[Chuck Burrows]

Mark I agree with both you and Sean, that clouts and leggins were worn, even by some "anglos" (my short hand for the Euros in the RMFT other than the French) despite the lack of them in Miller's prints, but then again Miller was relatively late and in many of his images even of the Indians the lower body covering is vague at best so it's hard to tell, plus like the pucker toe mocs I think Miller painted what he liked rather than keeping a record like Bodmer.
Besides the voyageurs and Metis being issued clouts and leggings post 1821 by HBC, there are other references to them - a few show up on the trade lists, JO Pattie mentions clouts, and although not trappers, Zeb Pike mentions his men having to wear them at times as also did Lewis and Clark. Some folks note that there is little in the written record so ergo the trappers must not have worn them, but then again Catlin described the clothes worn by Matope in minute detail yet there was no mention of a clout, so I'm not sure how much that particular argument holds water
Clay Landry has written an article:
Going Indian! The Use of Leggings and Breech Clout by the Euro-American Trapper of the Rocky Mountains for the 2010 Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal which I hope to get my hands on. www.museumofthemountainman.com/journal/journal2010.htm

As noted in the BOB 7 article on mountaineer clothing the most likley mountaineers to go Indian would be those that lived closest with them i.e the Metis, the smallish group of "Anglo" free trappers, and the eastern Indians who had come west including Iroquois, Delaware, and Shawnee. The other group to likley wear clouts and leggins would IMO be the early trappers such as Ed Robinson who was a Kentuckian and grew up in a time and place where wearing a clout and leggings was fairly common even popular at times based on the eastern documentation of the late 1700's.

Actually once you get used to wearing a clout and leggins and wear them on a daily basis, going back to regular pants feels constricting. It's well recorded that many an Indian who had grown up wearing a clout when given pants of one sort or another would often/usually cut the legs off and use them as leggins.

Heck I usually wear a clout even when wearing britches of some type which some folks think is strange, but it is in fact very practical at least for me - come to a stream or river and you can doff your britches to keep them dry, but still have your nether regions covered so as to keep ones self "decent". A clout also makes a great hand towel or hot pad and if you need some wadding for your gun - well it's right there.....
FWIW - One "trick" I learned from an old Blackfoot (he was in his 80's) back in the late 1960's was to put a twist in the section that goes between your legs - it feels a bit funny (the g string effect) at first but once you get used to it it's real comfortable. It keeps the fabric (I've only ever worn wool broadcloth or stroud clouts) from bunching up and makes a sort of pocket for the "male" parts.

[sean]

So nobody is gonna get their 'shorts twisted up' over this? ;D

Sean

[Longarm]

I for one like a clout and leggings, makes it real easy to "take care of business". I wear breeches about half the time , depends on the country I'm in, mostly what I'm going to be sitting on. My friend Richard A. wears a clout all the time and spends more time on horseback than most with no problem, 'course he goes barefoot alot too......he doesn't live in Nevada.

[Chuck Burrows]

Aug 13, 2010 8:12:43 GMT -7 @sean said:

So nobody is gonna get their 'shorts twisted up' over this? ;D

Sean

All right you're cut off - no more of the Taos Lightenin' for you....

[Cody]

Yup its hard to say something was'nt done because we dont have a painting of it though I rely on them alot cause they are as much proof as we have but to say everybody did the same is not for sure for instance when I was in the Army I carried an original Sykes Fairbairn knife my Uncle gave me when he retired till somebody told me what it was and then I carried a Kabar and some times a huge bowie niether one a Army issue knife but I carried them all the same so I reconed nothing is written in stone but we should try to keep stuff documented as we can IMO.

[Iche Iia]

Boy Cody, you spoke a lot in a short bit.

First off, I’m an old fart but I’ve gone to leggings and clout. I weighed the difference between chaffing and comfort and comfort won out! Here in Virginia, it got HOT this summer and buckskin pants got out of hand. Plus my persona (taken partly from Bridger and Beckwourth) lived and traded with the Crow Indians for a good while so leggings and a clout would probably have been acceptable to them. Regardless, I’m wearin’um!

As for carrying a big Bowie in Nam; in years to come, re-enactors of that war will probably think that if you were a scout, you HAD to have a Western Cutlery.

Or, 100 years from now people will think that if you road a Harley and it wasn’t black, it must have been a chopper.

[sean]

Anybody read the article on this in this year's Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal?

[Iche Iia]

Nope, how about a Reader's Digest version.

[Cody]

I feel your pain Iche Iia Im working a elk today and plan to make pants out of them but know I will burn up if it turns hot on me it sure is thick but supose Ill do some thinning on them but its the only hide long enough to make legs for me without adding some on .

[pathfinder]

I had originally posted a comment on this thread that I probably didn't put enough specificity to, concerning the concept of "Indian dress". I had suggested that since George Washington and others had referred to "Indian dress" 50-100 years earlier, and not being totally sure what that term meant or included ie. "moccasins" and "leggings" for sure, but breech clout or breeches....not so sure? Anyway, if the term "Indian dress" was a generic term for as long a period as 1750-1850, if anyone else knew what would have been applied to the term in the colonial period, there might be a likelihood that it was still being used a hundred years later.

The human condition being rather constant for 6,000 years, when we refer to "jeans", though a term used for well over a hundred years, though generic, it may never the less have a slightly different meaning from one to another.......and the style obviously changes from decade to decade.......but the term is still applied to a "jean" material, blue in color and typically worn as to labor or play in, or as a form of daily apparel. 200 years from now if the term is used to describe clothing worn in the late 20th century, we would get a pretty good idea.

My point in all this is to suggest that when we read the term Indian dress used in the early to mid 19th century, we might suggest that without specific documentation, that leggings and breech clout is part of the definition.

Now I know I am on dodgy ground, and really hesitated when I decided to try again on this thread, so as to avoid being chided for "colonial reference" for a fur trade board, but my point was if "Indian dress" was applied to the fur trade it might be the same as it had been a hundred years earlier..............my apologies to the librarians, but my common sense is much more active than my desire for period correctness....a constant battle I fight within myself. ........and I am not saying "if Bridger woulda had it, he's a used it".

So....let's see if I can clarify. When I think of, based on my limited knowledge of historical correctness, "Indian dress" circa 1754, I think of 1st "moccasins", 2nd "leggings" and 3rd, either breeches or "breech clout". By colonial times, above waist usually when referring to "Indian dress" would not have included a leather shirt, but most likely a linen or wool pull over shirt or no shirt at all.

In fur trade era, what would one suppose it meant by "Indian dress"?

Moccasins for sure......but since trousers were the norm for White culture would it have stopped at the feet, only to be Indian again at the waist? If it did start again for the upper body are we talking a leather war shirt type?

My personal feeling is that "Indian dress" was a term that had been in use for some time and if it generally meant moccasins, leggings and "possibly" breech clout, likely........... that is what it meant in use during the fur trade. All conjecture of course but seems like to me the only likely definition.

Another point is that there had been in colonial times a whole industry built up around the manufacture of buckskin clothing. One could surmise during the fur trade, buckskin britches/trousers could have been either worn/carried into the trade or made available at rendezvous..........though more likely and as I recall, wool trousers more likely the commodity carried by the traders to the brigades or free trappers. I haven't seen the documentation to suggest that buckskin trousers were made by Indian women, either for their white trapper husbands or on a custom bases for individual whites.......and if they had been in production by the native population and were considered superior over breech clout and leggings, seems there would have been quite an industry for NA braves.

Just an opinion with out the specific documentation (because it probably doesn't exist), but merely looking for consensus!.....at least until the documentation is found.

Doug

[sean]

Doug,

I apologize if my reply came off as chiding you for a colonial reference. I did not intend that. I do feel this is one of those western fur trade arguments that people get a bit wound up about. There are several issues that pop up which make this a difficult subject to deal with:

1) Period artwork is not very specific on this issue. The use of long hunting shirts makes it really unclear what people were wearing underneath.

2) Period accounts are less clear. They often interchange the terms breeches, trousers, pantaloons and pants for the same person over a relatively short period of time, suggesting the terms had significant overlap. This means that citing short quotes without their larger context can make those quotes seem to be much clearer evidence than they actually are.

3) The who-what-where-when of the arguments are often out of context. The discussion tends to pull quotes from a very broad range of time and space and apply it to something very specific. Its often hard for us to realize just how fast the changes of those times were. The western fur trade included white men who lived with and fought with the Shawnee on the Ohio frontier and it included offspring of those men who were brought up in a very civilized society in the exact same location. But it also included Shawnee, Delaware, Iroquois, and Metis who had lived the same hunter-gatherer existence for generations and white men who grew up playing with the displaced Shawnee and Delaware in Missouri. Trying to make any sort of broad conclusions about the presence or absence of piece of clothing among such a broad group is futile and attempting to argue a negative is impossible.

I would be interested to hear what people thought of Clay Landry's article on this topic. Its a 20+ page thesis on the clout and leggings in the western fur trade. I haven't critically waded through the whole thing yet, but so far I've found several of the normal historical assumptions that are usually included in this argument. The final point of the article, however, seems to leave it at the who-what-where-when.

I'll leave this with a period painting of a former AFC trapper painted in 1849 on the Southern Plains by Audubon. He was a Delaware man named Black Beaver who I would suggest is actually much more representative of the average western fur trapper of the period than what most people want to portray in this day and age.

Sean

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[pathfinder]

Aug 29, 2010 14:04:45 GMT -7 @sean said:

Doug,

I apologize if my reply came off as chiding you for a colonial reference. I did not intend that. I do feel this is one of those western fur trade arguments that people get a bit wound up about. There are several issues that pop up which make this a difficult subject to deal with.

Sean

Sean

Thanks for the apology....really not necessary....but thanks just the same.
I wasn't offended as much as I really didn't want to muddy the waters with a lack of documentation but rather decided to eliminate the posting till I had time to come back and make my point more clear. Lack of documentation is the scourge of much of what we do regardless of the era portrayed. I choose to act out my personas based on as much documentation as possible. But there are certain things, that I extract based on the logical assumptions of things known to exist. To me to conclude based on Miller's paintings alone that white trappers didn't wear breech clout and leggings or were even common in the western fur trade is absurd (my opinion and not a judgment on another's convictions). Audubon's painting for me, is the consequential image of the western trapper. Interesting how late it was painted and yet we see the much discussed and often debated "hunting shirt" being worn as it was 90 years before! I contend that frontier clothing changed little during the century between Washington's first foray into the "western frontier" to spy out the French, and the end of "manifest destiny". I contend as well that "Black Beaver's" image of simplicity was much more common than today's over exaggerated image of "mountain men". I would liken my own impression to Audubon's painting with out the extravagance of the hunting shirt!