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Women The women wore short, close-fitting, sleeveless dresses similar to a ‘summer shift’. The dresses were made of deerskin and typically reached mid thigh. They were belted at the waist with hand-woven belts and pinned at the breast with bone pins or carved broaches. A deer-hide scarf was worn around the neck and tucked into the top of the dress. A knitted or woven under-skirt, made of wild hemp, went from the waist to the knees, and had long fringes that went to the ankles. The women’s moccasins were made of soft leather and were laced up to the knee. Women of status had colored beads or feathers arranged in patterns in the under-skirt fringe. Colored seed-beads were used to decorate their moccasins. Hair was combed with bear grease to give it a deep shine, and sprinkled it with red and yellow dust. Some let their hair hang loose, while others tied it up into a knot on top of the head. They had pierced ears and wore earrings made of shell and bone. They wore multiple necklaces made of shell, bone, or horn that hung in successive layers to nearly cover their chest. Metal rings, made of beaten lead and copper, adorned their hands. Daily wear was made of tanned deer skin, but for special occasions, dresses made of woven mulberry-root bark and turkey feathers. Possum hair was spun into thread and dyed yellow, black or red. The dyed thread was used to weave belts, anklets, and garters for the men. Each woman developed her own special pattern for her husband to wear, which served as a ‘wedding ring’. An special chapter is the famous
Tear Dress. The following information has been extracted from The
People's Paths home page. The author of the article is
Wendell Cochran, Cherokee Master Craftsman and National Living
Treasure in the Area of Traditional Clothing and he kindly
let me extract parts of the article, which I have done clumsily,
but I encourage you to read it complete here,
it is a wonderful piece of historical accurate information
and it will teach you how a real tear dress should be. Mr Cochran
also sent me the photo illustrating his article "The Cherokee Tear Dress is the official tribal dress for women of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma by proclamation of the National Council. The Cherokee Nation is the only tribe to my knowledge to legislate a specific style of clothing as the official tribal dress. The Cherokees of North Carolina have a completely different style of dress. The word "tear" is pronounced as in "rip and tear", not tear as in the act of crying or in Tail of Tears. No one can remember who named it the Tear Dress. The name is onomatopoeia; it describes how the pieces of the dress are cut during construction. The original dress was constructed of simple shapes of squares and rectangles and each piece was torn across the grain of the fabric and not cut with scissors. The dress is a basic shirt-waist style. The bodice top (the old fashion term is waist) is attached the skirt by means of an inset waistband and closes up the front with buttons, much like a man’s shirt. To provide ease, shape and form, larger pieces are gathered and sewn onto smaller pieces of the garment. Historically, this style of shirt-waist dress was worn by working class women -- trades people, farmers, crafters, etc., who did not have the luxury of having a personal attendant to help them get dressed each day like the privileged class who dressed in stylish, form fitting garments that were fastened up the back with rows of hooks and eyes. This was the type dress that was made at home, either by a member of the family, or by the neighborhood seamstress. The dress is practical for two reasons: The fullness of the gathered bodice and skirt gave the wearer freedom of movement to do the labor of daily work chores, and the one piece construction allowed women to bend and stretch with out fretting with the problem of keeping a waist tucked in or hooked to a skirt. Making a Cherokee Tear Dress requires a medium-to-advanced knowledge of garment construction and sewing skills. A well fitting dress requires taking accurate measurements, a fair understanding of the sequence of steps needed to cut, sew and finish the dress, and a lot of patience. There are a few commercially printed tear dress patterns now available on the market, but none give complete instructions or are self-explanatory to the novice tear dressmaker. Measurements: Every tear dress is one-of-a-kind original creation and is usually made to fit the individual.
The True History of the Cherokee Tear Dress. This story may seem shocking and little sad to some who are romantically inclined to the modern myth about the Tear Dress. The myth is that our women wore this style of dress at the time of the Trail of Tears in 1838-39. That is not true for two reasons. First of all, Cherokee never had a traditional style of dress that was unique or ethnically different than any other tribe in the hot and humid Southeastern United States. The clothing of both sexes, as described by the very earliest European adventurers, was primitive and scant, covering mostly their private parts, and made of mostly animal hides and furs. They did use a rudimentary form of finger weaving and netting to make sashes, belts and rope. Loom weaving technology, which would allow them to make piece goods, was not available until the opening of the frontier to missionaries, the Moravians in particular. The clothing they made was fashioned on the type of clothing they were taught to make plain, simple and utilitarian. Frontier fashion was nothing like those seen in picture books and paintings of the ladies in eastern sea coast cities such as Boston, Philadelphia or New York. The second reason that the Tear Dress could not have been worn at the time of the Trail of Tears is because the style is completely wrong for the period. Women’s fashions of every historical period have a very definite silhouette, related primarily to the rise and fall of the waistline and the shape and size of the skirt. In the late 1830’s, the period of the beginning and the end of the Trail of Tears episode, women of fashion in the cities along the eastern seaboard were wearing garments that costume historians call late Empire, Romantic period, or Early Victorian. The Tear Dress is definitely a style that came into fashion at a later date. There is one painting extant of a Texas Cherokee couple which shows the woman wearing a most definite "Empire" style gown – high waist, bell shaped skirt and short puff sleeves. Whether this painting was executed on site with real Cherokees as models, thus recording a moment in time, or was finished by the artist at a later time, and using another model in city-fied clothing. It was not uncommon for artists to use substitute models when painting Indian subjects. The first official tear dress was made for and worn by Virginia Stroud during her reign in the titled position as "Miss Indian America" 1969. The garment we call the Cherokee Tear Dress came about to fulfill the needs of a particular situation and had more to do with embarrassment than it had to do with tribal pride or tradition. The situation arose in 1968 when a young Cherokee woman, by the name of Virginia Stroud, was chosen as "Miss Indian America". She had competed and was crowned in a Kiowa buckskin dress she had borrowed from a college friend. W.W. Keeler, who was the appointed Cherokee Chief at the time, was approached by a group of Cherokee women about Virginia Stroud’s official wardrobe. They felt it was unacceptable for a Cherokee women who was suppose to be representing the Cherokee people in the public eye was appearing at public events dressed as a Kiowa. Chief Keeler agreed and appointed a committee of Cherokee women to find something more appropriate for Miss Stroud that would reflect the Cherokee’s eastern woodland traditions, history and style. They could not find an established precedence in Oklahoma for a traditional tribal dress. The answer they decided could only be found someplace in North Carolina, Georgia or Tennessee. The ladies mounted a serious search for a record of a dress design that would be uniquely Cherokee and acceptable by Chief Keeler. They did not want to simply copy or adapt any other tribe’s style. And they did not want the dress to look anything like the Plain’s Indian dress. They also wanted the dress to be historically correct and if a dress could be found, it had to be documented. Ms. Stroud flew back to Tulsa and was met by a personal representative of Chief Keeler. It was at that point that Chief Keeler and his handpicked committee of Cherokee women began their search to find a suitable Cherokee outfit for her to wear. Two of the women on the committee were Marie Waddle, a BIA employee, and Wynona Day, the daughter of an influential Cherokee family from the days before statehood. Wynona Day is the person responsible for discovering the dress that became the prototype and model for the modern day Tear Dress. I have recently been told that the dress actually belonged to Wynona Day’s Grandmother or great-grandmother and that it had in truth been stored in a trunk. She had come across it by chance after she inherited her mother's belongings. She remembered having seen the dress and had retrieved it for the committee to examine. As soon as the committee of women decided that Wynona’s Grandmother’s hand made dress would be perfectly acceptable for the new Miss Indian America to wear as a representative of the Cherokee people, Chief Keeler concurred. The next step was to get a new Tear Dress made for Virginia to wear. Virginia Stroud’s sister,
Elizabeth Walters, who she calls B, made the new dress. She
copied the dress line for line, including duplicating the
reverse applique on the decorative bands over the shoulders
and around the skirt. The dress has a square neckline and
no buttons or buttonholes. It closes with hooks and eyes;
however the original had no visible means of fastening the
dress with modern closures. We believe that according to
fashion research, it was common practice for women to use
broach pins to fasten blouses and those garments known as
waists. Today we would probably just use safety pins." Children Young children usually went naked in the warmer months. Older children wore woven cloth or skin skirts, and they had fur robes and moccasins for winter use. As the children approached puberty, adult clothing was provided. Men They wore simple skin belts
until they were married, and had a deer skin ‘purse’ suspended
from their belt in front. A knife made of flint, obsidian,
or copper, with a wooden or bone handle was worn on the right
side of the belt. Men’s moccasins were short with flaps on
either side to help protect the ankles from brush. For hunting
or warfare, men wore leather ‘chaps’ or leggings that went
from the ankle to mid-thigh, and were fastened to the belt
with thongs. Men of the Long Hair Clan wore
their hair as the name implies. They did not have Men’s decoration consisted of woven belts, anklets and wrist bands made by their wives. Thong necklaces consisted of bone, claw, teeth, shells, copper plates, hammered lead, and large carved shell plates called ‘gorgets’. Men also had pierced ears, with large shell or metal plates inserted into the holes, stretching the ear-lobes to great size. Men were often tattooed, by pricking the skin and rubbing the wound with ashes from a fire, to give the tattoo a dark color. Special Attire For Stomp Dances, men and women would attach shell rattles to their ankles. The dance leaders would use small turtle shells filled with rocks, to make a rattling sound with each dance step. Fancy dress moccasins were decorated with colored beads, porcupine quills, and bits of dyed thread. Special head and hair ornaments were made from possum hair, died black, yellow or red. Marriage Ceremony, please see the description under the section ‘Marriage Ceremony’. For Booger Dances, which some
say originated after first white contact, the men would dress
in white-man’s clothing with absurd ‘caricature’ faces, with
long noses reminiscent of phallic symbols. Please see
section on the “Booger Dance”.
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Cherokees
were not feather-nuts and never wore huge feather head-dresses
like the Woodland or Plains people. The only time a Cherokee
would wear a feather was in time of war or during a Ball Game
similar to La Cross. In preparation for war, the priest
(medicine man) from the Paint Clan (Ani Wodi) would prepare
the feathers for the warriors to wear into battle. This
consisted of a single Eagle or Hawk feather, with a small feather,
dyed blood red, tied to the top. The feathers would then
be tied into the Cherokee warrior’s hair, on the top of his
head. The dying technique was considered a secret and
sacred rite. 
pony-tails,
but used cloth or leather head-bands with a false pony-tail
attached to the front, made of animal hair. In ancient times,
the Cherokee men sported beards, braided in the center, and
on each side of the mouth. Later, they adopted the style
of shaving or plucking out the unwanted facial hair. 
War
and ball-game attire was much the same, but with the addition
of feathers. Each warrior or ball player tied one feather to
the top of their pony-tail, and another smaller red feather
was attached to the top of the larger feather. The art of feather
dying was reserved for the shaman of the Paint Clan. 
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