999, BELIEFS AND USAGES OF CHICKASAW [BTH. ANN. 44 
for a considerable time—The Muskéhge women are separate for three moons, 
exclusive of that moon in which they are delivered. .. . 
Should any of the Indian women violate this law of purity, they would be 
censured and suffer for any sudden sickness or death that might happen among 
the people, as the necessary effect of the divine anger for their polluting sin, 
contrary to their old traditional law of female purity. Like the greater part 
of the Israelites, it is the fear of the temporal evils and the prospect of temporal 
good that makes them so tenacious and observant of their laws. At the stated 
period the Indian women’s impurity is finished by ablution and they are again 
admitted to social and holy privileges.” 
At the birth of a child [says Speck] the mother must be kept from public 
view for the space of two months, generally residing in the menstrual lodge. 
She eats no fresh meat. The father is not allowed to engage in work for 
about a month, and he is looked upon by his townsmen as an undesirable com- 
panion on the hunt and elsewhere. The navel cord is first corded, and after a 
short time is clipped and placed in a secret place until the prophet of the 
child’s group can examine it to determine the future prospects of the infant. 
Similarly to the Choctaw, Natchez, and other tribes of the southeastern area, 
the Chickasaw practiced head flattening of both sexes by artificial compression. 
The custom, however, has been obsolete for many generations. Soon after 
birth, and every night for six months, a wooden block thickly padded with 
buckskin was placed upon the infant’s frontal bone and bound in place. The 
process was continued during later childhood by hand pressure. Deformation 
of this sort was believed to develop the most admirable qualities and was a sign 
ef high social rank. 
Twin children are considered as supernatural manifestations and are brought 
before the prophet to have their futures foretold also. Should one of them be 
a boy, he is likely to become the miko of his clan, being called Itapétka, 
“ double.” * 
The following note by the same writer should be added in this 
connection : 
They never allowed children to make use of anything that was double for 
food, such as double strawberries, fruit, or chicken gizzard, and when a young 
man killed his first game of any sort he did not eat it himself, but distributed 
the meat among his clansfolk.” 
If this last regulation were not observed it was thought that the 
youth would not kill any more game. 
Adair has the following to say regarding the sympathetic magic 
practiced on Chickasaw babies in order to insure them good fortune: 
Their male children they chuse to raise on the skins of panthers, on ac- 
count of the communicative principle, which they reckon all nature is possessed 
of, in conveying qualities according to the regimen that is followed; and as 
the panther is endued with many qualities beyond any of his fellow animals 
in the American woods, as smelling, stréngth, cunning, and a prodigious spring, 
they reckon such a bed is the first rudiments of war. But it is worthy of 
notice they change the regimen in nurturing their young females; these they 
lay on the skins of fawns or buffalo calves because they are shy and timorous: 
89 Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., p. 124. %Tbid., p. 54. 
90 Speck in Jour, Am, lolk-Lore, vol. xx, p. 57. 
