244 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



and nose ornaments, decorations for the headdress, ornaments on 

 clothing, danglers on belts, and, it is said, the points of pikes, chop- 

 ping knives, sweat scrapers, and breastplates, though these last may 

 have been in reality only large gorgets. Pieces of meteoric iron and 

 hematite were occasionally used for ornaments or implements, and 

 &mall gold and silver nuggets were hammered out into ornaments. 

 In Florida gold beads have been found worked over from ornaments 

 made by the Central American Indians, and cast upon the Florida 

 coast with the vessels which were carrying them to Spain. 



VEGETABLE KINGDOM 



We find mention of the following cultivated food plants: Corn, 

 beans, peas, squashes and pumpkins, orache, and sunflowers (for their 

 seeds). 



The following wild plants, shrubs, and trees were utilized in one 

 way or another as food: Angelico, blackberries, black gum berries, 

 blue palmetto, cane (for the seeds), cherries, chestnuts, chinquapin 

 nuts, cockspur grass, coco berries, crabapples, Dioscorea villosa^ 

 gooseberries, grapes, ground nuts, hickory nuts, honeylocust, huckle- 

 berries, moss in creeks(?), mulberries, mushrooms, oak acorns, palm 

 berries, Panicum maximum^ wild peas, persimmons, plums, pond-lily 

 seeds, prickly pears, raspberries, wild rice, sagittaria, sea grapes, serv- 

 ice berries, smilax roots, strawberries, sugar from the sugar maple, 

 wild sweetpotatoes, "tuckahoe," walnuts, zamia (in Florida), also 

 haws. 



Tobacco of the native species {Nicotiana rustica) was used every- 

 where for smoking, mixed often with sumac and sometimes with 

 leaves of the sweetgum. Tobacco ashes mixed with wood ashes were 

 used by women along the lower Mississippi to stain their teeth. 



Corn was used for the following industrial purposes: Young 

 Indian corn beaten to a pulp to take the place of deer brains in dress- 

 ing skins ; the juice of green corn to erase tattoo marks obtained under 

 false pretenses ; corncobs burned to make smoke in tanning skins and 

 also rubbed over the outsides of pots before they were fired. 



Pumpkin rind was employed in making masks, and perhaps rattles. 



Grapevines were used sometimes as substitutes for cord. 



There is mention of a persimmon root being worked into a comb. 



Cane supplied one of the most important of all raw materials. 

 Besides the use of its seeds, as indicated above, it was employed in 

 making baskets and mats; as building material; in making fishing 

 crails and traps, spears, and arrows; as backing for wattle walls; in 

 making beds in houses and in the construction of corncribs; as a 

 substitute for the shuttle in weaving; as knives and torches; in the 

 "spiral fire" at Creek councils; in making boxes, cradles, sieves, fan- 

 ners, hampers, blowguns, blowgun arrows, shields, stockades and 



