March 1, 1987
By Helen M. Fagg
Vigo County Historical Society
Skookum dolls reflect Siwash tribe lifestyle
The old Indian medicine man held a stick figure--a mannikin doll--in the right hand of the sick child and chanted incantations beseeching the child’s higher spirit to return to the body so that the fever would drop and the healing could occur.
From the memory of this Indian custom and the prototype doll of the medicine man, Mary McAboy of Missoula, Mont., designed and produced her first Skookum doll. Skookum is Siwash for “Bully Good.” A paper label with the words, Skookum (Bully Good) Indian, was placed on the foot of each doll.
Mary had watched her mother create many dolls using dried apple heads. So for several years her dolls were made in the same way. The features were copied from the faces of real Indian braves and squaws.
Mary began making her dolls in 1913 and received her first patent for an Indian brave and a squaw with papoose in 1914. In 1919 she received a patent for the same Skookum, the name she had used from the first. At the popularity of the dolls grew, Mary looked for a sponsor to produce her designs. The H.H. Tammen and Arrow Novelty companies took over this work in the Denver and Los Angeles plants and produced thousands of the dolls from 1915 until 1950.
The bodies of the dolls were built from sticks and straw, covered with a cotton cloth. The heads were made from dried apples and composition. In later years the heads were made of plastic.
The structure of the bodies remained the same through the years. Horsehair was used for the wigs and real Indian blanket pieces were used as clothing. Arms were indicated by the manner in which the blanket was folded across the front. A piece of cotton cloth formed the shirt front of the brave and the dress of the squaw. Strips of cloth or felt were used to cover the stick legs. Headbands of leather and feathers and wooden or glass beads were added as adornments.
The age of the Skookum doll can be determined by the type of moccasins it wears. Early dolls were moccasins made of leather. These later were replaced by moccasins made of felt or heavy paper.
Dolls produced in the 1940s wore moccasins of rust-colored hard plastic. Instead of attaching paper labels to the feet, the name was printed into the bottom of the shoe.
The two most outstanding features of the Skookum are the high cheek bones and the eyes glancing to the right. Looking right is believed to signify taking a right-leading path that indicated good health and life. Only a few dolls are looking straight forward or glancing to the left.
The Tammen Co. used the cottage industry plan for some of the dolls in the Denver area. One woman, a Mrs. Anderson of North Denver, recalls that she assembled the dolls in her home and received 25 cents a doll. She was given a supply of heads, squares of Indiana blanket, horsehair or the wigs and other materials. In an average week she was able to put together 20 to 25 dolls. Her family complained of finding strands of horsehair all over the house.
The healing spirit of the Skookum may have traveled a full circle when H.H. Tammen, the Denver doll manufacturer, died in 1924 and left half of his great fortune to the Denver Children’s Hospital. The fortune was earned in part from the production and sale of the blanket Indian dolls.
The Historical Museum now has four of these dolls on display. The two pictured here are in the doll case on the first floor. The other two are in the Indian exhibit on the lower level.
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday though Sunday.