Buckskin (leather) in the context of "Tanning (leather)"

A hide or skin is an animal skin treated for human use. The word "hide" is related to the Dutch word huid and the German word Haut, which mean skin. The industry defines hides as "skins" of large animals e.g. cow, buffalo; while skins refer to "skins" of smaller animals: goat, sheep, deer, pig, fish, alligator, snake, etc.Common commercial hides include leather from cattle and other livestock animals, buckskin, alligator skin and snake skin. All are used for shoes, clothes, leather bags, belts, or other fashion accessories. Leather is also used in cars, upholstery, interior decorating, horse tack and harnesses. Skins are sometimes still gathered from hunting and processed at a domestic or artisanal level but most leather making is now industrialized and large-scale. Various tannins are used for this purpose. Hides are also used as processed chews for dogs or other pets.

The term "skin" is sometimes expanded to include furs, which are harvested from various species, including cats, mustelids, and bears.

Nora Thompson Dean (July 3, 1907 – November 29, 1984), from Dewey, Oklahoma, was a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. As a Lenape traditionalist and one of the last fluent speakers of the southern Unami dialect of the Lenape language, she was an influential mentor to younger tribal members and is widely cited in scholarship on Lenape /luh-NAH-pay/ culture.

Nora was also known by her indigenous blessing name, Weènchipahkihëlèxkwe, ‘Touching Leaves Woman.’ These blessing names are normally kept quiet, but Nora was such a wonderful woman that it should be shown why she additionally had such an appealing demeanor. It would be sad to let it pass from memory by silence. The Unami (= /w’NAH-mee/ ‘downriver [person]’) name of Nora Thompson Dean and the genealogy of her ancestors is now readily accessible on the Internet after someone in 2008 adapted the spelling Wenjipahkeehlehkwe), intending it to be limited to one cultural event, but it spread widely on the Internet. Its modern spelling is Weènchipahkihëlèxkwe, ‘Touching Leaves Woman’, or, as Nora herself had proposed, ‘Leaves-that-touch-each-other-from-time-to-time woman.’ It is phonetically written as Weεnčipahkihəlεxkwe, /way-en-jee-paH-kee-hull-EKH-kway/. The morphological segments are as follows: (We:εnt-ipahk-ihəle:)-xkwe, ‘on.both.sides/on.either.side/together-leaves-moving–woman’. The initial stem shows a reciprocal reduplication, rare for Unami, (*we:we:- instead of wë-), ‘the leaves (of the trees) on either side (of the path) come together (overhead rustling)’. This is the kind of blessing name that is derived from a vision recitation. Her name was bestowed on her by her mother, Sarah Wilson Thompson. The woman with whom Sarah Wilson was riding on a horse was not her biological mother but her aunt, Way-lay-luh-mah (‘the esteemed one’), as supplied by Weslager, and it was not Kweiti, Sarah's biological mother, but Way-lay-luh-mahwho raised her and whom she called her mother, and so Nora called Way-lay-luh-mah her grandmother. This naming pattern is in line with Lenape kinship ideas. The vision occurred after Sarah was riding horseback one day holding onto Way-lay-luh-mah's waist when Way-lay-luh-mah had fainted from a probable heart attack. Sarah tried to hold her, but her grip slipped, and both had fallen off the horse. Sarah was very frightened, but some of the trees turned into people who told her not to be afraid and wanted to help her. Sarah stood listening, and the tree leaves by rustling started to sing a song to her, one that she sang in the Big House. [Paraphrased by Carl Masthay per NTD's interview by Katherine Red Corn, April 1968, and compiled with help from Ives Goddard, Raymond Whritenour, and James Rementer.]