Hides: The Tanning Art and Its History

Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending

How to read this entry: Documented fact = archaeological, museum or published scholarship (Sources). Tradition — the people's own account = Indigenous oral history / Indigenous-organisation teaching, labelled as such. Debated / Claim = disputed point. No ceremonial or restricted content is described. Scope note: hide use in the Americas in time.

Deep Time: Scrapers First, Hides by Inference

• The evidence level, stated plainly. Documented fact: a fresh hide rots in days and almost never survives in old deposits, so early hide work is known from its tools — use-wear on scrapers, shaped bone tools, cut marks — not from hides themselves (Hallett et al., 2021; Litov & Barkai, 2024). Any date for "the first tanning" is inference, stated as such.
• About 400,000 years ago. Documented fact: use-wear identifies hide preparation at Hoxne, England, at about this date, and Tel Aviv researchers identified Quina scrapers — thick, scale-edged tools — at Qesem Cave and Jaljulia, also c. 400,000 years ago, used to butcher fallow deer and process hides after elephants disappeared there. Scrapers had been used on large-game hides from c. 1.5 million years ago — scraping, not proof of tanning (Litov & Barkai, 2024).
• 120,000–90,000 years ago, Morocco. Documented fact: bone tools from Contrebandiers Cave, use-marked for scraping hides into leather and pelts into fur, are among the earliest direct tool evidence for working skins into clothing; cut marks on carnivore bones there indicate skinning for fur, not meat (Hallett et al., 2021).
• In the early Americas. Documented fact: at Wilamaya Patjxa, Peru, a burial c. 9,000 years ago held a stacked toolkit — points, scrapers, red ocher, ocher-stained cobbles — whose excavators interpret scrapers and ocher together as a hide-processing kit (Haas et al., 2020). Debated / Claim: that burial's full interpretation has been discussed since; the toolkit is documented, its meaning is the excavators' reading. By the Upper Paleolithic, end scrapers were joined by awls and eyed needles — sewn, fitted clothing (Fumane Cave study, 2021).

The Developed Art: Brain Tanning, Step by Step

The fullest published sequences come from named peoples of North America. Details differed by nation, animal and use; this sequence follows the Dene (Athabascan) moosehide and Plains bison-robe records, which agree in outline.

• 1. Fleshing. Documented fact: the fresh hide was staked, draped over a post or beam, or laced into a frame, and flesh, fat and membrane scraped from the inner side. Alaskan Dene tanners aged and scraped moosehides to remove flesh and hair first (Crowell & Biddison, Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, n.d.). Yukon Dene Elder Gertie Tom's account describes fleshing with a tool made from a moose leg bone — days of work (Indigenous Yukon, n.d.).
• 2. Dehairing and graining. Documented fact: for buckskin, hair and the outer grain layer were scraped away; for robes and winter clothing the hair stayed on and only the flesh side was worked (Crowell & Biddison, n.d.; National Park Service [NPS], n.d., on Cheyenne robes, 1846–47).
• 3. Braining — the dressing. Documented fact: the hide was soaked or rubbed with brains — usually, in the Dene record, the moose's own — emulsified in warm water (Crowell & Biddison, n.d.). Lewis Garrard recorded Cheyenne women in 1846–47 rubbing bison brains, liver, bone marrow and soap weed into a robe's flesh side, over several days (NPS, n.d.). Tradition — the tanners' own saying: "every animal has enough brains to tan its own hide" — quoted from practitioners (Cook, 2006), called "the long told saying" by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game guide (n.d.), with a named exception by Kanien'kehá:ka tanner Jodi Lynn Maracle: it holds "except for humans and bison," which need brains from more than one animal (Western News, 2025).
• 4. The chemistry, as modern sources explain it. Documented fact: brain tissue is rich in lecithin and emulsified fats; worked in, these coat collagen fibres so they do not glue together as the hide dries — what makes an undressed hide dry stiff (Sustainability Directory, n.d.). Modern accounts class this as lubrication, not a complete tannage: smoking finishes the cross-linking.
• 5. Working and stretching. Documented fact: a dressed hide must be worked continuously as it dries — pulled, frame-stretched, drawn over stake or cable — or it dries hard; Dene moosehides were "scraped again and stretched on a frame" after braining (Crowell & Biddison, n.d.). The thirteen stages taught at kâniyâsihk Culture Camps (Plains Cree) make the labour explicit: skinning, stringing, fleshing, drying, scraping, braining, first smoking, folding, soaking in brain again, wringing, stretching until soft, sewing into a tube, final smoking (2024–25).
• 6. Smoking. Documented fact: the softened hide was sewn into a bag or tube, or hung, over smouldering punky wood — rotten spruce in the Dene record — often for hours, on both sides (Crowell & Biddison, n.d.; Indigenous Yukon, n.d.).

Smoke Tanning and Colour

• What smoke does, and colour. Documented fact: wood smoke carries aldehydes, including formaldehyde, and phenolics that cross-link collagen — a genuine chemical tannage — so a smoked hide can be wetted and re-softened instead of reverting to rawhide, and resists rot (Sustainability Directory, n.d.); an unsmoked dressed hide stiffens after wetting. Smoking also gives the colour: Dene moosehide over rotten spruce takes "water resistance, a golden-brown color, and an evocative scent" (Crowell & Biddison, n.d.). Unsmoked hide stays pale — Cheyenne women dressed robes kept for their own use "as soft and white as possible," a trader complained, taking less pains with trade robes (NPS, n.d.). Smoke time, wood and thickness govern depth.

Rawhide and Buckskin: Two Materials, Two Jobs

• Rawhide. Documented fact: rawhide is hide cleaned, dehaired and dried under tension with no dressing or tannage; it dries hard and strong. The Smithsonian Dene account sets the contrast: tanned moosehide is supple sewing leather, while unprocessed rawhide "is stiff, tough, and best suited for making strong lines and lashings" (Crowell & Biddison, n.d.). Other recorded Plains/Plateau uses: shields, drumheads, snowshoe webbing (babiche), containers.
• Buckskin. Documented fact: buckskin is the soft, dehaired, brain-dressed, usually smoked product — clothing leather for shirts, leggings, dresses, mittens, bags and moccasins, valued for staying soft, breathing, and washing and re-softening (Crowell & Biddison, n.d.; NPS, n.d.).
• Parfleche — the Plains rawhide technology. Documented fact: a parfleche is a folded or sewn rawhide container, painted with geometric designs, made by women of Plains and Plateau peoples and used in matched pairs as saddle-borne envelopes for dried meat, clothing and belongings (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, n.d., Lakota, c. 1885; Spencer Museum of Art, n.d.). Making: clean, dehair, stretch and sun-dry the hide into a stiff sheet, then fold, sew and paint (Denver Art Museum, n.d.). It predates European contact; the name came from French traders — parer, to parry, plus flèche, arrow — first applied to shields (National Cowboy Museum, n.d., Cheyenne, c. 1860).

Tools and Frames

• Scrapers, frames, the ulu. Documented fact: the scraper's deep lineage continued in bone, antler, stone and, after trade contact, steel. Garrard describes a Cheyenne adze-shaped scraper hafted at an elk-horn angle, chipping a pegged-out robe thin (NPS, n.d., 1846–47); Dene fleshers were moose leg bone (Indigenous Yukon, n.d.). Hides were worked pegged flat on the ground (Plains robes, hair down, "stretched to its utmost... by means of wooden pegs" — Garrard), laced into an upright frame (Dene and Cree camps, for large moose/elk hides), or draped over a post or beam for smaller skins. Inuit women used the ulu, the crescent-bladed women's knife: in the Nunavut record, to remove sealskin blubber and membrane, wash the skin, sew flipper holes, and frame-dry it two to three days (Nunavut sealskin study, n.d.; Issenman, 1997).

Whose Work It Was: The Division of Labour in the Record

• Women's work, in the ethnographic record. Documented fact: across the Plains, Subarctic and Arctic records used here, hide preparation is recorded as women's work — Cheyenne women tanning every traded robe at Bent's Fort (NPS, n.d.: "the work of tanning these robes fell entirely upon Native women"); Dena'ina Elder Helen Dick and Ahtna Elder Jeanie Maxim as teachers in the Smithsonian's 2017–18 project; Inuit women preparing, cutting and sewing all skin clothing (Arctic Anthropology, 2024).
• The scale of one robe. Documented fact: Theodore Davis estimated a woman took on average ten days to tan one bison robe; American Fur Company agent John F. A. Sanford wrote c. 1845 that a lodge seldom traded more than twenty skins a year; Andrew Isenberg's widely cited figure is about ten robes a year per woman (NPS, n.d.; Isenberg, 2000, summarised in PERC, 2026). Together, the robe trade's arithmetic: its volume was capped by women's hands.
• What the market did to that labour. Documented fact: Isenberg documents women shifting labour from food preparation to robe production as the market grew, their value within and between peoples shifting with it, including as captives in warfare (Isenberg, 2000, summarised in PERC, 2026) — presented as his argument from the record.

The North: Inuit Skin Preparation

• Sealskin. Documented fact: Inuit sealskin preparation centred on scraping — ulu or blunt scrapers — washing, and frame-drying, then softening by repeated scraping, stretching, chewing, rubbing and wringing; the synthesis records up to a dozen softening stages, judged by the seamstress's hand, because a badly processed hide stiffens or rots (Issenman, 1997). Hair-on sealskin served for outer clothing; dehaired sealskin — e.g. white naluaq, soaked, scraped and dried over weeks — for boot soles and summer footwear (Nunavut sealskin study, n.d.).
• The waterproof seam. Documented fact: skin clothing was sewn with sinew thread (ivalu), and sinew swells when wet, sealing its needle holes — the material basis of the waterproof seam (Arctic Anthropology, 2024, after Issenman, 1997). Sealskin boots (kamiik) were sewn wet, so seams tightened as they dried (Inuit innovation literature, n.d.).
• Gut work — at the published level only. Documented fact: Inuit women made waterproof parkas, windows, bags and tent parts from seal, walrus, whale and other gut, using its tough middle layer. Alaskan and Canadian Inuit scraped its inner layer with a blunt tool; one bearded seal's upper intestine could yield enough for one parka; the cleaned gut was inflated, dried with ends tied, then split lengthwise into strips (Arctic Anthropology, 2024, synthesising Wilder, 1977; Issenman, 1997; Reed, 2008). Kalaallit women cleaned harp-seal gut by pressing, storing in blubber, and chewing off coatings (Fabricius, 1780, via Arctic Anthropology, 2024). Three gut parkas excavated at Nuulliit, Greenland, dated to the 14th century, already show the cut and sewing of parkas collected 1846–1945 — 550 years of continuity (Arctic Anthropology, 2024).
• Bird-skin work. Documented fact: Qikirtamiut (Belcher Islands) women made winter coats (mitigaviniq) from eider-duck skins pieced together — about seventeen adult male skins for body and sleeves, up to about 75 in museum accounts of a full garment. Women sorted skins by age, sex and body part — thick adult male skins for hunters' outer coats, supple juvenile skins for children's coats and hood edges — using fourteen hunters' terms for eider categories, five used in coat-making (Nakashima, 2002; Kaine, 2004). Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) makers likewise scraped and cleaned — but did not formally tan — bird skins; one source reports 150 cormorant neck skins in one parka (Alutiiq Museum, n.d.).

The Trade Eras: Deer Hides and Buffalo Robes

• The southern deerskin trade. Documented fact: for over a century the southeastern colonial trade's mainstay was white-tailed deerskins, supplied by Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Catawba and Shawnee hunters, exported mainly through Charleston. About 45,000 deerskins a year went from Charleston to London in 1699–1705; the trade was South Carolina's most valuable export in 1705–15 (Buchanan, 2003; Braund, 1993, Deerskins and Duffels). By the 1760s the annual haul of all southeastern peoples totalled perhaps 800,000 pounds of deerskins (Braund, 1993, p. 98, as reviewed). It reoriented the supplying societies, depleted deer toward local extirpation, and effectively ended with the Revolutionary War (Braund, 1993).
• The robe trade. Documented fact: the 19th-century Plains trade took only fully tanned robes — winter-killed, hair-on bison cow/calf robes dressed by Indigenous women — becoming carriage robes, coats and hats in the US and Europe (NPS, n.d.). Isenberg's figure: roughly 130,000 robes a year through New Orleans, 1825–30 (2000, via PERC, 2026).

Industrial Disruption: The Hide Hunt and Chrome

• 1871 and after — the hide, not the robe. Documented fact: around 1871 a Pennsylvania tannery experiment showed commercially tanned bison hide made strong industrial leather, above all factory drive belts. Railways then let professional non-Indigenous hunters take raw hides at industrial scale — 1,378,359 carried east by three railroads in 1872–74 alone, by one compiled count (Isenberg, 2000). The southern herd was effectively gone by the late 1870s, the northern by 1884; William Hornaday counted 1,091 bison in America in 1889 (Hornaday, 1889, as summarised). Tanning labour and its value had moved from Indigenous women's hands to industrial tanneries, and the animal itself was nearly exterminated in about a decade.
• Chrome tanning. Documented fact: chromium tanning was invented in 1858 (Friedrich Knapp and Carl Hyltén-Cavallius; Augustus Schultz's US patent, 1884), cutting tanning from weeks or months to about a day; by the 20th century it was roughly 85 per cent of world leather production (hide-materials history literature, summarised 2024–26). Factory leather undercut hand-tanned hide on price and speed, even where animals remained: the Smithsonian Dene project records most moosehides in recent generations going to commercial tanneries — a lower-quality hide, its Dene collaborators judge, and a break in passing knowledge on (2017–18).

Continuance: The Brain-Tan Revival

• Hide camps. Documented fact: the revival runs largely through Indigenous-led hide camps teaching the full sequence — kâniyâsihk Culture Camps, Saskatchewan (Plains Cree; thirteen stages, elk and moose, 2024–25), and Ontario's Niizh Manidook Hide Camp, whose tanners call their work "revitalizing the brain-tanning method," deer hides, since 2019 (n.d.).
• Artists and teachers carrying it. Documented fact: Dena'ina artist Joel Isaak and Ahtna artist Melissa Shaginoff learned moosehide tanning from Elders Helen Dick and Jeanie Maxim in the Smithsonian's 2017–18 project (twenty-three teaching videos). Kanien'kehá:ka artist Jodi Lynn Maracle, Western University's artist-in-residence 2025–26, tans deer hides with Dish With One Spoon materials — brain, hardwood ash, corn-cob smoke — and runs hide camps in Kanien'kéha, framing the work as reciprocity: using the whole animal, closing the gap between hunters and makers (Western News, 2025).

Sources

• Alaska Department of Fish and Game (n.d.). Brain-tanning / home tanning guide.
• Alutiiq Museum (n.d.). Word of the Week: Coat — bird-skin parkas. Kodiak.
• Arctic Anthropology (2024). "600-Year-Old Gut-Skin Parkas… Nuulliit, Greenland." 59(2). Synthesising Fabricius (1780); Hatt (1914); Hickman (1987); Issenman (1997); Reed (2008); Wilder (1977).
• Braund, Kathryn E. Holland (1993). Deerskins and Duffels. University of Nebraska Press.
• Buchanan, John (2003). Jackson's Way. Wiley.
• Cook, Sam (2006). "Hides tanned this way are more supple and valuable." Knight Ridder.
• Crowell, Aron L. & Biddison, Dawn (Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, n.d.). "Tanning and Sewing Moosehide in the Dene Way"; Smithsonian (2017–18), Athabascan Moosehide Tanning & Sewing.
• Denver Art Museum (n.d.). Parfleche Painting materials.
• Haas, Randall et al. (2020). "Female hunters of the early Americas." Science Advances 6(45).
• Hallett, Emily et al. (2021). Bone tools for leather working, Contrebandiers Cave. iScience.
• Indigenous Yukon (n.d.). "Moosehide Tanning," after Gertie Tom (Kwanlin Dün), How to Tan Hides in the Native Way.
• Isenberg, Andrew C. (2000). The Destruction of the Bison. Cambridge University Press. (Figures via PERC, 2026.)
• Issenman, Betty (1997). Sinews of Survival. UBC Press.
• Kaine, Élisabeth (2004). Métissage. La Boîte Rouge vif / Musées de la civilisation.
• kâniyâsihk Culture Camps (2024–25). Hide-tanning documentation, Ministikwan Lake Cree Nation.
• Litov, Vlad & Barkai, Ran (2024). Quina scrapers at Qesem Cave and Jaljulia. Archaeologies.
• Nakashima, Douglas J. (2002). "Inuit Women's Knowledge of Bird Skins… Sanikiluaq, Nunavut." Material Culture Review 56.
• National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (n.d.). Parfleche, Cheyenne, c. 1860.
• National Park Service (n.d.). "Hunting and Processing Bison Robes," after Gardner (2004) — quoting Garrard, Davis, Sanford.
• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (n.d.). Parfleche Envelope, Lakota, c. 1885.
• Niizh Manidook Hide Camp (n.d.). Our Team / camp history, Ontario.
• Spencer Museum of Art (n.d.). Parfleche collection records.
• Sustainability Directory (n.d.). "Traditional Tanning" (chemistry).
• Western News, Western University (2025). "Jodi Lynn Maracle, 2025–26 Indigenous artist-in-residence."

Flagged / weakest-sourced: (1) Trade figures cited second-hand — Isenberg via PERC (2026), Braund's 800,000-lb figure via a review, the 1872–74 railroad count via compilations, Hornaday as summarised — quote from the books/records at publication. (2) The "enough brains" saying is documented as a saying, with Maracle's exception; not asserted as a measured law. (3) Dehairing agents vary by people; no single recipe is asserted. (4) Nunavut sealskin steps come from a journal study read in summary. (5) A tipi-cover slow-smoking claim on one practitioner account was removed pending a stronger source.