About The Artwork
Parfleche Bronze Buffalo Horn names both a material and the object made from it: stiff rawhide, and the envelope-shaped bags, pouches, and cases folded from it. Hides were cleaned, dehaired, and sun-dried rather than tanned, leaving leather that was tough, lightweight, and water-resistant. French fur traders coined the name from parer (to parry) and flèche (arrow) — rawhide dense enough to turn an arrow.
Decoration was women's work: geometric patterns painted or incised in bright primary colors — diamonds, triangles, bars, hourglass forms that were readable to those who knew them as mountains, water, paths, stars. Patterns descended through families. A parfleche told you where its owner came from.
This tradition did not end. Contemporary Indigenous artists continue to work in parfleche, and the form carries spiritual, symbolic, and cultural weight in ceremony and regalia today.
