Bonnet

Description:

Innu woman’s hat made with felt, decorative ribbon, and hair wraps attached

References:

Mina Hubbard. 1981[1908]. A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador. St. John’s: Breakwater Press. Mr. James McKenzie. The King’s Posts and Journal of a Canoe Jaunt through the King’s Domains, 1808. The Saguenay and the Labrador Coast. pp.422-423. In. L. R. Masson. Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest: Récits de voyages, letters et rapports inédits relatifs au nord-ouest canadien. Québec: de l’Imprimerie Générale A. Coté et Cie. 1890.

Innu Narrative:

“Manituian – mitish akunishkueun – women’s traditional beaded hat.”  Shimun Michel and Manian (Ashini) Michel

Other Info:

The bonnets in the Peenamin MacKenzie School collection were made for Innu girls going to the provincial winter games in Corner Brook in 2000 (Sheshka [Michel] Snow, personal communication). They are not “genuine” bonnets in the sense that they are not beaded and have “fake” hair buns attached to the sides. In the “post-contact tradition,” women would have had at least two of these hats – one a working hat for life in the country, the other a hat for special occasions such as attending church and all its associated functions (mass, weddings, funerals, etc.). Women wore their hair long, which they wrapped about small, wooden blocks (ashpituakan), and covered with black strips of cloth. This bun of hair is called shetshipituakan or shetshipituan. Older women in some of the Quebec North Shore communities continue to wear these bonnets on a daily basis, but in Sheshatshiu, women wear them only on special occasions.

The bonnet is generally not associated with Barren Ground Innu women. Although they wore their hair in buns (sheshipituan), they covered their heads with scarves rather than bonnets, while in cold temperatures, they pulled the hoods of their caribou fur jackets over their heads.

The beadwork on the bonnets could be very elaborate, and frequently made use of the double curved motif.

The origin of the beautiful, Innu, women’s bonnet is a great mystery. Mailhot reports (personal communication, March 2004), that the idea that the bonnet was introduced by the Oblate, Father Arnaud, is false. She had found a reference to the bonnet in the correspondence of lay missionaries before the start of the Oblate period in 1840.

The earliest reference to a bonnet-like woman’s hat is from James McKenzie’s account of his visits to the “King’s Posts” on the Quebec North Shore in 1808 (p.422). “Their caps, in the shape of a priest’s mitre, are made of red and blue second cloth, the seams and rim of which are ornamented with beads and ribands, fancifully put on.”

Rupert H. Baxter, a member of the Bowdoin College Scientific Expedition to Labrador in 1891 photographed Innu in the Sheshatshiu/Grand Lake area. Here, Innu women are clearly shown wearing their hair in buns and covering their heads with the bonnet. See link to photos in this record.

The bonnet was certainly in evidence in 1905 on the George River when Mina Hubbard met a group of women there during her trip from Sheshatshiu to Fort Chimo (Kuujjuaq). “Their clothing was of a quite civilized fashion, the dresses being of woolen goods of various colours made with plain blouse and skirt, while on their feet they wore moccasins of dressed deerskin. The jet black hair was parted from forehead to neck, and brought round on either side, where it was wound into a little hard roll in front of the ear and bound about with pieces of plain cloth or a pretty beaded band. Each head was adorned with a tuque made from black and red broadcloth, with beaded or braided band around the head. Both the manner of wearing the hair and the tuque were exceedingly picturesque and becoming…” (Hubbard, 1981[1908]:157)

When Boston gentleman explorer, William Brooks Cabot, met the Innu at a camp at Mushuau-shipu (George River) in 1910 some of the women wore bonnets while others covered their heads with scarves.