Top hats were definitely part of 19th century Native fashion! Trade materials like silver and cloth had long been prized, and clothing items like top hats and military coats were considered particularly FABULOUS.

I’ve heard that delegations to DC were given top hats, but they were also probably easily bought around white settlements as well. Earlier in the 19th century, you’d usually see Chiefs wearing them with silver bands, beading, or feathers, and it was a mark of their diplomatic importance. Men in the mid-19th century Quebec, where the Krieghoff painting is, were adopting French-y dress increasingly, while women usually stuck to native-style dress (see below), though they sometimes wore a fancy western hat! This woman probably trades her baskets to settlers for a living, and doesn’t mind playing the artiste. You still see people wearing top hats at powwows today. Total dandies, us.

Here’s an engraving by M. Elias Regnault in 1849 (via the fabulous Iroquois Beadwork), showing Native men from Quebec wearing some top hats with ostrich feather and possibly a silver band, as well as habitant dress.

And a photo of an Anishinaabe man from the western Great Lakes taken in Washington DC in 1862, with his top hat enhanced with the feathers he might have worn in a traditional headdress. The sash around the coat is also very fashionable. Photo is from the Massachusetts Historical Society, via the fabulous Beyond Buckskin.

And finally, a top hat embellished with Plains-style porcupine quills and beadwork. (Via some auction site that didn’t list provenance!).