Matachées: Painted Hides, Indigenous Nations, and French Colonial Encounters along the Mississippi Valley

Drawing on art history, anthropology, and colonial history, this article explores the production and cultural significance of matachées (painted) hides in the Mississippi Valley during the 18th century, under French colonial rule. Markers of identity and status, these hides circulated in both Indigenous and colonial spheres, where they played a key role in trade, diplomacy, and regional ceremonial practices. On the basis of some rare specimens attributed to Quapaw and Illinois artists, today preserved in Paris and Besançon, and in order to resituate these workswithin their original cultural trajectories, this study seeks to reinterpret these objects by combining archival research, material analysis, and collaboration with contemporary Indigenous scholars.