Glengarry style beaded hats.

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Glengarry style beaded hats.

The Glengarry bonnet was a hat style adopted by the Scottish Highlanders around 1800. Nineteenth century Hudson Bay Company trade invoices indicate that large quantities of these were imported for the Indian trade. The Indians would embellish them with beads, dyed moosehair and ribbon work. Many were decorated with floral patterns but exceptional examples will have a bird or some other pictographic element in the design. Some of these may have been worn as “smoking caps.” Style-conscious men wore formal indoor caps from the sixteenth through the late nineteenth century. They were generally worn to prevent the hair from smelling of tobacco smoke.