Native American Face Painting
This page introduces face painting.
The first step in face painting is to paint around your nose with your index finger and middle finger.
Second you paint your forehead.
Third you paint around your chin.
Fourth you paint around your eyes.
Fifth you paint the rest of your face.
To make face paints, you gather roots, berries, and tree bark. You would grind the items up, and put the paints on your face. They also used colored clay.
A warrior would paint his face with colored clay. He would do the design of his tribe. Each tribe has its own designs for war and ceremonies. For some face paintings they would cover their face and then plaster it down with mud leaving the holes for the eyes and mouth. Face painting can be the lightest streak on the face.
After warriors came home from a hunt, they would have a big feast, cutting up the animal they hunted and killed. They would play a lot of games, containing parts of the animal they killed. The Indians would use every part of the animal they killed. They would use the muscles to hold the braids of ladies, young girls and girls. The animal's skin was used for blankets, the meat for food,the bones for bows, walking sticks and arrows. Then they would paint their faces and have dances.
Native Americans had many different kinds of ceremonies for different kinds of things. Here are some examples:
- a bean planting ceremony
- a warrior dance
- a maple festival
- a planting festival
- a strawberry festival
- a false face society
- a sun dance (this lasted for twelve days)
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All pictures on this page are used with permission.
