Lenni Lenape Clothing Essay

Lenni Lenape

The Lenni Lenape always dressed for the season. Always dressed for the icy cold winters and the sticky hot summers. In the hot summers women wore a short wrap around skirt, and the men wore the men would wear light cloth such as breechclout and leggings tied to a belt. In the cold the men and women both wore a hide shirt, fur robes and perhaps mittens and fur caps. Everyone wore soft soled deerskin moccasins. Their clothes were made from deerskin and beaver skin.

They kept themselves clean and were accustomed to a daily swim or used a sweat lodge or steam bath. The women wore their hair long and when working around fires, kept it in a braid or bun in the back of their head. For decoration, they might wrap their hair with a snakeskin or give their hair a gloss by applying bear grease.

Young men often would cut their hair or pull it out by the roots so that only a small round spot on the crest of the head would remain. Although Lenape men did have sparse facial hair, most got rid of it by plucking it out. Men typically wore a hairpiece called a “roach,” made out of
The word 'Pomo' means "those who live at red earth hole" in reference to their earth lodge pit houses that were built with a red colored earth as the winter homes of the tribe. Their tribal lands were subject to various incursions by the Russians, Spanish, Mexican and finally the Americans. The Pomo people were made slaves by many of these invaders and watched as their tribal lands fell to the Russian traders seeking sea otter furs, the Spanish who wanted to convert the tribe to Christianity, the Mexicans who forced the people to work on their farms and finally the Americans who moved west along the California Trail who were joined by the Gold Rush settlers. The Pomo were decimated by the diseases brought by the invaders and those who survived were forced on to various