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Wamus

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Native American and pioneer jacket

A wamus is a type of jacket worn in the United States. The term is applied to several different types of upper-body garment.

Early American history

One of the more consistent uses of wamus is to describe a fringed leather tunic that slips over the head. For early American pioneer families in the Southern United States, the buckskin (later, cloth) wamus was widely worn by young and pre-teen boys in the late 18th and very early 19th century. The wamus, if it opened down the front, was either laced shut or held closed with a belt, with dressier versions made from elk skin. If made from cloth, the wamus was dyed blue and trimmed with yellow fringe.

As worn by the Lakota people, the wamus was a ceremonial tunic which was coloured to represent the type of person the wearer was, as well as painted with mnemonic designs. Traditionally, if a warrior had scalped his enemy, he was allowed to trim his wamus with human hair cut from the heads of mourning women in addition to the cut fringe.

Later history

The wamus eventually came to describe a sleeved jacket or cardigan, typically with buttoned wristbands and a belt-like waistband, in which format, it was also sometimes called a roundabout.

For Sunday best and other special occasions Amish men wear a jacket called a wamus, distinct from the 'mutze' traditionally worn for preaching.

See also

References

  1. ^ Wilcox, R. Turner (2004). Five centuries of American costume (Dover ed.). Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. pp. 42–43. ISBN 9780486436104.
  2. ^ Walker, James R. (1992). DeMallie, Raymond J. (ed.). Lakota society (1. Bison Book printing ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780803297371.
  3. Dick, Everett (1993). The Dixie frontier : a social history of the Southern frontier from the first transmontane beginnings to the Civil War ( New York, 1948. ed.). Norman : Univ. of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806123851.
  4. Picken, Mary Brooks (1999). A dictionary of costume and fashion : historic and modern. pp. 188–189. ISBN 9780486141602.
  5. Krohn, Katherine (2012). Calico dresses and buffalo robes : American West fashions from the 1840s to the 1890s. Minneapolis: Twenty-first Century Books. ISBN 9780761358909.
  6. "Roundabout". The American Tailor and Cutter. 23. Jno. J. Mitchell Company: 125. 1902. Roundabout — A name for a certain kind of jacket. (See Wamus.)
  7. Schwieder, Elmer; Schwieder, Dorothy (2009). A peculiar people Iowa's old order Amish : an expanded edition (1st University of Iowa Press ed.). Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. ISBN 9781587298486.
  8. Hostetler, John A. (2005). "The Amish use of symbols (1964)". In Weaver-Zercher, David (ed.). Writing the Amish : the worlds of John A. Hostetler. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 9780271026862.
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