Mohawk People - Traditional Mohawk Dress

Traditional Mohawk Dress

Most people believe that the Mohawks, like some indigenous tribes in the Great Lakes region, sometimes wore their hair cut off except for a narrow strip down the middle of the scalp from the forehead to the nape, that was approximately three finger widths across. However, the idea that Mohawks had "Mohawk hairstyles" is incorrect, and came from Hollywood movies, particularly Drums Along the Mohawk. The true hairstyle of the Mohawk, including the entire Six Nations, was to remove the hair from the head by plucking (not shaving) tuft by tuft of hair until all that was left was a square of hair on the back crown of the head. The remaining hair was shortened so that three short braids of hair were created and those braids were highly decorated. This is the true "Mohawk" hairstyle and not the Hollywood version taken from the Pawnee.

The women wore their hair long, often with traditional bear grease, or tied back into a single braid. They often wore no covering or hat on their heads, even in winter.

Traditional dress styles of the Kanien'kehá:ka Mohawk peoples consisted of women going topless in summer with a skirt of deerskin. In colder seasons, women wore a full woodland deerskin dress, leather tied underwear, long fashioned hair or a braid and bear grease. They were several ear piercings adorned by shell earrings, shell necklaces, and also puckered seam ankle wrap moccasins.

The women also used a layer of smoked and cured moss as an insulation absorbency for menses, as well as simple scraps of leather. Later menses use consisted of cotton linen pieces where pilgrim settlers and missionaries provided trade and introduced of such items.

The traditional dress styles of the Kanien'kehá:ka Mohawk men consisted solely of a breech cloth of deerskin in summer, deerskin leggings and a full piece deerskin shirt in winter, several shell strand earrings, shell necklaces, long fashioned hair, and puckered seamed wrap ankle moccasins.

The men also carried a quill and flint arrow hunting bag, and arm and knee bands.

During the summer, the Kanien'kehá:ka Mohawk children traditionally wore nothing up to the ages of thirteen, the time before they were ready for their warrior or woman passages or rites.

Later dress after European contact combined some cloth pieces such as the males' ribbon shirt in addition to the deerskin clothing, and wool trousers and skirts. For a time many Mohawk peoples incorporated a combination of the older styles of dress with newly introduced forms of clothing.

According to author Kanatiiosh in Hodenasaunee Clothing and & Other Cultural Items, Mohawks as a part of the Hodenasaunee Confederacy "traditionally used furs obtained from the woodland, which consisted of elk and deer hides, corn husks, and they also wove plant and tree fibers to produce clothing".

Later, sinew or animal gut was cleaned and prepared as a thread for garments and footwear and was threaded to porcupine quills or sharp leg bones to sew or pierce eyeholes for threading. Clothing dyes were obtained of various sources such as berries, tree barks, flowers, grasses, sometimes fixed with urine.

Generally a village of Mohawk people wore the same design of clothing applicable to their gender, with individualized color and artwork designs incorporated onto the clothing and moccasins.

Durable clothing that was held by older village people and adults was handed down to others in their family sometimes as gifts, honours, or because of outgrowth.

Mohawk clothing was sometimes reminiscent of designs from trade with neighboring First Nation tribes, and more closely resembled that of other Six Nations confederacy nations; however, much of the originality of the Mohawk nation peoples' style of dress was preserved as the foundation of the style they wore.