Skookum Dolls

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. When I was young I met a Comanche champion Fancy Dancer named Woogie Watchetaker. He was very sweet to me, as I was a child whose parents were helping put on a Pow Wow in Nashville, Indiana, so I was around, underfoot. He talked with me often and was so gentle. A bit later I was given an antique Indian doll and I named it Woogie, for my friend. It wasn't until a couple of decades later that I found out the heritage of this doll - it was a Skookum doll. A doll with a history all its own.

Skookum dolls began as an idea of Mary McAboy, a Montana woman who, in 1913, began making apple head Indian dolls with blankets wrapped around them. Skookum was a word used in that area which meant excellent or "bully good" (as it says on the label on many of the feet of these dolls). She patented several designs, male, female and a female with a baby. She made them from her home. As her business grew, she went into business with a Western company in Colorado called H.H. Tammen. This company distributed these dolls for nearly 50 years. These dolls had molded faces, which were then given to housewives out west who hand painted them and then assembled the doll using old pieces of fabric, beads and blankets. So, no Skookum will ever be like another. These dolls were sold in trading posts and many shops in the west and were a popular tourist item from the 1920's - 1960's. Their age can be determined by the make of the face, the type of materials used and the type of material used for moccasins. These dolls are a part of Americana and nostalgic for so many people.

I have begun to find these dolls and we now have many on display, for sale, at the shop. I also have learned how to refurbish some of the older dolls, as they were often stuffed with straw, which has deteriorated over time, or they have lost some of their hair or have a moth-eaten blanket. Children played with these dolls and often cracked a face or lost the blanket. But some children kept them as a display doll and they are well preserved. So you can find them in many different levels of value.

I love the fact that Skookum dolls have such a history and were a part of American childhood, but were special enough to be preserved in many attics across the country. I also feel a sense of synchronicity that we now sell them in our shop. I wonder if Woogie knows how often I think of him now (o: