Tipatshimuna Description:
In the old days before the Innu were settled in government built villages, they used to clothe themselves in caribou skins. Caribou skin coats, mittens, leggings, moccasins, and hoods provided warm protection from even the most bitter northerly winds.
Two types of skin coats were made – one with the fur left on the outside, the other with the fur removed entirely. This second type of coat was worn by men and was often painted with beautiful motifs such as “double curves.” Sometimes, the motifs were inspired by dreams. In general, they were a way of showing respect to the Animal Masters.
Dorothy Burnham has studied the history, design, cut and decoration of these painted coats in great detail. She believes their style may have been based on European jackets worn by both French and English traders and other newcomers to Innu territory. She notes “the earliest coats that have survived probably date from about 1700 and the latest from about 1930.”
For more information and images of the caribou skin coat, search the Material Culture section of this website.
Stories:
Listen to Matinen (Selma) Michelin, an Elder from Sheshatshiu talk about caribou coats |
Listen to the late Tshishennish Pasteen recall the ways his mother and aunt used to make painted coats |
Gallery:
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- Skin coat, The Rooms, Provincial Museum Division Provincial Museum of Newfoundland & Labrador
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- Close-up of the double-curve motif from caribou skin coat (III-B-208). The Rooms. Provincial Museum Division. Newfoundland and Labrador
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- Innu men wearing both fur and painted caribou skin coats. 1880. Photographer unknown. Photo courtesy Canadian Museum of History (no. J-6542)
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- Painting on a caribou skin. 1963. Photo courtesy of Ray Webber
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- Jodie Ashini with painted caribou jacket returned to the Innu by the Labrador Heritage Society. 2021. Photo courtesy of Heidi Atter
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- Close up of Innu painted jacket. The red was painted with red ochre, a natural clay combined with animal fat. The yellow is believed to have been fish eggs mixed with animal fat, and the blue is from blueberries mixed with animal fat. Photo courtesy of Heidi Atter
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- Children in caribou skin coats playing a game. 1927-8. The second Rawson-Macmillan Subarctic Expedition. Courtesy of Field Museum of Natural History (Anthropology)
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- Mushuau Innu toddler in caribou fur jacket. 1927-8. Photo by Donald Baxter MacMillan, Courtesy of Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, Bowdoin College
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- Ueuetemishkueu (Alice) Noah smoking caribou hide so that it can be used to make moccasins, mittens and other clothing. 1966-68. Photo by Georg Henriksen
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- Innu caribou skin painted jacket. 1830-1853. Collected by Sir John Henry Lefroy. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence
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- Child’s painted summer coat and cap. 1931. Frank Speck Collection. Photo courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum
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- Man’s summer coat. 1931. Frank Speck collection. Photo courtesy of the University of of Pennsylvania Museum
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- Man’s painted winter coat with fur inside. 1931. Frank Speck collection. Photo courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum
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- Man’s painted summer coat. 1931. Frank Speck collection. Photo courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum
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- Family in caribou fur jackets. 1927-8. The second Rawson-Macmillan Subarctic Expedition. Courtesy of Field Museum of Natural History (Anthropology)
“I would call it pishakekup (hide coat or caribou coat) because it is made out of hide.” Sheshin (Rich) Rich
“I made his coat. I put the spider designs on both sides in the front and both sides at the back too. It was a very clear design on the back of his coat, and it could be seen very clearly when he walked around.” Matinen (Rich) Katshinak
“It’s called pishakanekup (caribou skin coat) or atikuianakup (caribou skin coat). Yes, the smaller one, just like the one a child is used for (to wrap a child in or to sleep on). I remember people in Davis Inlet wearing caribou clothing in the past. These are the only people who I can remember seeing with caribou clothing. Our grandfather, Meshkana (late Sam Rich), was still alive when we went to Davis Inlet; he was still wearing a caribou fur coat. We used to go with him when he went ice fishing, and he would catch lots of rock cod. We met up with his family at Sango Bay. Davis Inlet Innuat were still wearing caribou fur coats while some dressed up the way we dress nowadays.” Matinen (Selma) Michelin
“Madeline ( Mishta Matinen) made this kind of coat. She made one for a man by the name of Mr. King – the storeowner. She made it really nice and it was all made out of caribou hide. She sold it to him.” Pinamen (Rich) Katshinak
“The women were very skilled in painting the designs. The women today would know how to make them too if they tried. They used mikuanike, uname, and shiphipnipinish, uahuts (fish eggs) [MacKenzie lists uakun and uakua as “fish egg;” mikuanapui as “ink”]. And they used a lot of different things for paint.” Tshishennish Pasteen
The painted caribou-skin coats of the Innu have been described at length in several publications (see. Burnham, Turner, 1979[1894]:123-127; see also Tanner, 1979:140-142). In the pre-settlement period, the decoration of clothing such as the elaborately painted coats was part of a symbolic system of exchange between people and animal masters, who lived in relations of constant reciprocity with one another. As Tanner (1979:141) noted, “the decoration of utilitarian objects used in the hunt is for the purpose of showing respect to the animal about to be killed, and to ensure that object performs its function properly. An exception to this is the special coat or parka made of the skin of an animal, which gives to the wearer the animal’s power.”
Both Tanner and Speck reported that the designs used on the coats appeared to a hunter in a dream (Tanner, 1979:142; Speck, 1977[1935]:190).
Dorthy Burnham (1992) has studied the history, design (cut) and decoration of these coats in great detail. She notes that “Two types of design dominate the painted decoration of the coats: those based on quadrate layout and those based on double curves. The two traditions may have developed separately but on these coats they are often intermingled” (1992:59). Whatever their relationship to pre-contact clothing designs, Burnham believes that “there was a sequence of style that followed the visual appearance of garments worn by Europeans in the areas where the painted caribou-skin coats originated” (1992:5). See Speck (1914) for a discussion of the double-curve motif in northeastern Algonkian art.
References:
Dorothy K. Burnham. 1992. To Please the Caribou. Seattle: University of Washington Press; Adrian Tanner. 1979. Bringing Home Animals. St. John’s: ISER; Frank Speck. 1914. The Double-Curve Motive in Northeastern Algonkian Art. Anthropological Series no. 1. Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 42. Ottawa: Department of Mines; Frank Speck. 1977[1935]. Naskapi. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press; Lucien Turner. 1979[1884]. Indians and Eskimos in the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula. Quebec: Presses COMEDITEX. Lynn Drapeau. 1999. Dictionnaire Montagnais-français. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec.