Medicine Pouches Activity

This Activity is meant for Cub Scouts.

suede leather
leather lace
leather sewing needle
leather neck cord
leather strips, beads, shells, ... for decorating

Medicine pouches made from leather and used by Indians to store meaningful items they had collected during their life. The pouch was hung around the neck or off the belt and would be decorated individually.

Stories are more fun when there is a totem handed out that symbolizes the story. For example, giving the audience a black feather after telling the story of Why Crow Is Black. Look through our List of Stories to see other good campfire stories that include a totem. You might want to tell Origin of Medicine at the time you make or hand out the pouches.

If your scouts all make medicine pouches in which to keep their items, they will be able to keep the symbols together and recall them later.
Creating medicine pouches is a good activity for scouts but you can also just buy them for $1 to $3 each from softpouch.com depending on if you want real leather or artificial, but you need to buy a large quantity.

We made our pouches from suede leather purchased from Tandy Leather - TandyLeather.com. A leather punch was used to punch holes along the edge of each pouch side. The sides were stitched together using leather lace and a neck cord was tied on. Tandy also has pouch kits, but they cost about $7 each.