How did native Americans make there masks?

Answer 1

William C Orchard has made a comprehensive study of all the beads used by native Americans, published in his 1975 book for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation: "Beads and Beadwork of the American Indians".

In this book he states that on 12 October, 1492, Columbus presented natives on Watling Island with strings of small glass beads; this was the start of a growing influx of European glass beads into the Americas.

Before they were able to obtain these European beads, American natives used shell, soft stone, pearls, native copper and bone to produce beads. Some shells, such as dentalia, marginella and olivella, needed almost no work before they could be strung on thin cords to make necklaces, earrings and other ornaments. Shell is a fairly soft material that could be worked very easily with stone tools and drilled to produce small beads.

Bird bones are hollow, so they simply had to be slowly cut to size using a stone flake before being strung. Soft stone such as steatite can be cut, shaped and drilled with very simple hard-stone tools.

Native copper was found in many parts of the Americas; dug up as nuggets it could be hammered (cold) into flat shapes, then rolled to form round or cylindrical beads.

"Wampum" beads of purple and white were made with enormous effort from the inner parts of mussel or clam shells, carefully cut and drilled to make long strings or woven into belts - it was the considerable work that went into making them that dictated their value.

One very slow way of drilling through a bead was to use a thin, hardwood stick coated in damp sand, which acted as an abrasive which was twisted in the hand (for a very long period) to slowly drill a hole in the bead from each side.

Gradually the increasing supply of European glass beads meant that the manufacture of native beads ceased completely.

Answer 2

Native Americans made their masks usually out of green or black stone, wood, obsidian, real human skulls, and sometimes clay. Ceramic pots were rare but made. Like the Aztecs for example used a lot of turquoise on their masks. Hope that helps stupid dumb dumb who didn't know the answer

Answer 3

Details of Crow beadwork techniques have been published by the Museum of the American Indian Heye Foundation in the booklet "Crow Indian Beadwork". This sets out the different kinds of glass beads obtained in trade by Crow women, the stitches used in sewing beads, the designs they used and the colours they favoured.

All Crow glass beads were obtained from white traders. At first (up to the 1860s) they were "Pony beads", size 8/0 in modern craft shops, available in just a few colours: blue, white, black, red and amber. These were used to create blocky geometric patterns of rectangles, stripes and triangles.

Around 1865 new, smaller beads called seed beads became available (size 11/0 in today's sizes) and these were quickly adapted to make more intricate designs. They came in a wider range of colours and the Crow preferred light blue, lavender, white, dark blue, red, yellow and green.

Light blue was mainly used for backgrounds, with the other colours making up the designs.

Sinew thread was used for stitching, with a small awl to make holes for this thread. Overlaid stitch and lazy stitch were the main sewing techniques, although a modified lazy stitch was also used.

In the reservation period, favourite designs were hourglass shapes, tall triangles, crosses, diamonds, rectangles and "feather" shapes - these were all very similar to the painted designs traditionally used on rawhide containers called "parfleches".

See links below for images:

Answer 4

The Native Americans traded with the new settlers for beads.

Answer 5

They put them in necklaces, in their hair, and on their clothes if you were trying to ask, "How did the Native Americans use polished beads?"