Mackinaw cloth is a heavy and dense water-repellent woolen cloth, similar to Melton cloth but using a tartan pattern, often "buffalo plaid". It was used to make a short coat of the same name, sometimes with a doubled shoulder. These jackets have their origins on the Canadian frontier and were later made famous by Canadian and American loggers in the upper Midwest as workwear during the mid-19th century logging boom.

Mackinaw blankets are referenced by Josiah A. Gregg in his 1844 book Commerce of the Prairies about trade on the Santa Fe Trail. He notes that these were contraband, subject to confiscation by customs officers, but that they could be concealed between the double layers of Osnaburg sheet fabrics which formed the roof of covered cargo wagons.