$1,350.00
$1,500.00
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Late 19th Century
3.25" D
Hand Crafted from Hide Leather and Glass Seed Beads and Fully Beaded and Painted from the Nez Perce Native American Indians. The Ball Consist of Alternating Vertical Bands in Multiple Colors Interspersed by every Third One having Rectangles and the Beadwork is Sinew Sewn.
In Very Good Condition
An antique Plains Indian fully beaded puberty ball is a traditional artifact from Northern Plains tribes, particularly the Sioux (Lakota/Dakota), Cheyenne, and related groups. These small, spherical objects (typically 2.5–3.5 inches in diameter) were crafted from tanned hide (often buffalo or deer), stuffed (with materials like buffalo hair, plant fibers, or cloth), and completely covered in intricate glass trade seed beadwork. The beads form geometric patterns, banded designs, crosses, scatters of multiple colors (e.g., red, white, blue, green, yellow, pink, black), or symbolic motifs using techniques like lazy/lane stitch.
These balls were primarily used in girls' puberty or coming-of-age ceremonies (known among the Lakota as Isnati Awíčhalowaŋpi or related to the "Toss the Ball" or "Throwing the Ball" rite). The ceremony marked a girl's transition to womanhood, emphasizing values like endurance, responsibility, spiritual discipline, and community continuity. The ball symbolized wholeness, the sacred circle, and life's cycles in Plains cosmology. It served as both a symbolic object and sometimes part of instructional or ritual activities (e.g., tossing or symbolic play), prepared lovingly by family members like grandmothers.
