SWANTON] WAR CUSTOMS 230 
her loss with a sincere heart, for the space of a year, and her circumstances 
of living are so strait as to need a change of her station—and the elder brother 
of her deceased husband lies with her—she is thereby exempted from the law 
of mourning, has a liberty to tie up her hair, anoint and paint herself. . . . 
The warm-constitutioned young widows keep their eye so intent on this mild 
beneficent law, that they frequently treat their elder brother-in-law with 
spirituous liquors till they intoxicate them, and thereby decoy them to make 
free, and so put themselves out of the reach of the mortifying law. If they 
are disappointed, as it sometimes happens, they fall on the men, calling them 
Hoobuk Wakse, or Skoobdle, Hassé kroopha, ‘‘Wunuchus praeputio detecto, et 
pene breyi”; the most degrading of epithets.” 
WAR CUSTOMS 
The best account of war customs among the southeastern Indians 
is that of Adair, which is reprinted in the Forty-second Annual Re- 
port of this Bureau. ** It is so extensive that I will not repeat it here 
in its entirety but give only Adair’s description of the ceremonies 
actually witnessed by him after the return of a Chickasaw war party 
from the Illinois territory. 
In the year 1765, when the Chikkasah returned with two French scalps, from 
the Illinois (while the British troops were on the Mississippi, about 170 leagues 
below the Illinois), as my trading house was near the Chikkasah leader, I had 
a good opportunity of observing his conduct, as far as it was exposed to public 
view. 
Within a day’s march of home, he sent a runner ahead with the glad tidings— 
and to order his dark winter house to be swept out very clean, for fear of 
pollution. By ancient custom, when the outstanding party set off for war, 
the women are so afraid of the power of their holy things, and of prophaning 
them, that they sweep the house and earth quite clean, place the sweepings 
in a heap behind the door, leaving it there undisturbed till Opde, who carries 
the ark, orders them by a faithful messenger to remove it. He likewise orders 
them to carry out every utensil which the women had used during his absence 
for fear of incurring evil by pollution. The party appeared next day painted 
red and black, their heads covered all over with swan-down, and a tuft of long 
white feathers fixt to the crown of their heads. Thus they approached, carry- 
ing each of the scalps on a branch of the ever-green pine, singing the awful 
death song, with a solemn striking air, and sometimes Yo He Wah; now and © 
then sounding the shrill death Whé0 Whoop Whoop. When they arrived, the 
leader went ahead of his company, round his winter hothouse contrary to the 
course of the sun, singing the monosyllable Yo, for about the space of five 
seconds on a tenor key; again, He He short, on a bass key; then Wah Wah, 
three times, gutturally on the treble, very shrill, but not so short as the bass 
note. In this manner they repeated those sacred“ notes, Yo, He He, Wah Wah, 
three times, while they were finishing the circle, 
The leader’s Hetissu, or “ waiter,’ placed a couple of new blocks of wood 
near the war pole, opposite to the door of the circular hothouse in the middle of 
7 Adair, Hist. Am, Inds., pp. 186-190. 
27a Worty-second Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer, Etthn., pp. 407-424. 
* Adair calls them ‘‘ sacred’ because he believed the Indians to be descended from the 
Hebrews and these meaningless syllables to be an attempt at the name Jehovah. 
