I'll speak to the traditional armor of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. I've had the great privilege to attend lectures by Tommy Joseph and Steve Henrikson, two of the world's experts in the traditional armor of Southeast Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. You can check out a short lecture by Tommy Joseph here, and a longer (and more recent) lecture by Henrikson here.

You'll find that traditional Alaska Native armor has a lot in common with the armor used by the Chukchi and other Siberian groups. We have fewer surviving examples of Alaska Native armor, but many more examples of Chukchi and Native Siberian armor, so some of our modern study relies upon examples provided by those sources.

We also have several very well done sketches, descriptions and paintings that survive from Spanish, French, British, American and Russian travelers in Alaska during the last years of the 18th century and first years of the 19th century.

In any event, a lot of Native armor consists of lamellar construction. It's made up primarily of small plates sewn together with sinew. In western and northwestern Alaska, these plates would be made of bone. In one spectacular example that I've seen, the plates are a series of walrus tusks cut into slices and bound by sinew. In southeastern Alaska, which boasts (even today) significant stands of old-growth forest, these plates might be wood.

In Southeast Alaska, the Tlingit had a tradition of spectacular war helmets adorned with clan symbols or other representative designs. A human face was often used as a psychological symbol, at least in the surviving examples. Tlingit armor also included a neck/face guard that rested below the helmet and above the body armor. It was held in place by a semi-circular mouthpiece that would be bitten to hold it steady. Small slits allowed vision, and combined with a heavy helmet carved from a solid burl, the wearer's head was almost impervious to slashing attacks or arrow impacts.

The Tlingit are also known to have used the Chukchi-style armor cape (seen in the image I've linked above). If a wearer was attacked by archers, the wearer would turn his back, and the cape ─ in combination with lamellar body armor ─ would protect his exposed arms and head (assuming he wasn't wearing a helmet and face/neck guard).

This armor was effective against traditional weaponry, and even against the low-velocity matchlock and flintlock muskets used by the Russians in their initial advance across Alaska's coastline. In Alexander Baranov's first encounter with the Tlingit (an ambush in Prince William Sound) he wrote that the Russian bullets had difficulty penetrating Tlingit armor, and only the intervention of Russian cannon saved the Russians (and their Aleut/Alutiiq partners) from defeat.

Traditional armor was far from immune to bullets, however, and improvements in gunpowder supplied to the Pacific Northwest (Russian powder was generally poor, but American and British traders brought higher-quality material) meant that it quickly outlived its usefulness. By the middle of the 19th century, Tlingit armor had become largely ceremonial, and you start to see armor created specifically for decoration. Some of the better examples, such as that in the collection of New York's American Museum of Natural History are lamellar construction using Chinese coins. Those coins were bought in bulk by American traders, who then traded them to the Tlingit for furs that were then sold at great profit in China.

As far as I know, only one original set of traditional Tlingit armor survives, and there are only a few dozen surviving Tlingit war helmets.