430 BUREAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



hot houses, a circumstance commented upon by Elvas. Lawson (1860, 

 p. 65) says the same of the Waxhaw town house, which was so low 

 that one had to stoop in order to enter. The largest Natchez doors 

 are described as 4 feet high by 2 wide, that of the Chickasaw hot 

 house is given as 4 feet high and just wide enough for one person 

 to enter at a time. The Choctaw door was "from three to four feet 

 in height." (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, pp. 174-175; Swanton, 

 1911, p. 60; 1931 a, p. 37.) The entrance to the temple of the Taensa 

 is given as 4 feet by "not more than 3," while the Quapaw and 

 Yazoo doors are given by Dumont as 5 feet in height. This is some- 

 what above the average, but the recorded dimensions of the Bayo- 

 goula temple entrance, 8 by 2^2 feet, on the authority of Iberville, 

 is the maximum. (Swanton, 1911, pp. 59, 275, 269; Dumont, 1753, 

 vol. 1, pp. 142-144.) In this case I am inclined to think that the 

 original manuscript may have indicated 5 or 6 instead of 8. 



When we come to Virginia we find that the wooden or lattice door 

 has been replaced by a mat which one "could turn up or let fall at 

 pleasure" (Strachey, 1849, p. 70). To protect the house against wild 

 beasts, rather than wild men, when the occupants moved away for a 

 time, they barricaded the entrance with great logs of wood, and 

 similar barricades were used along the lower Mississippi. 



AWNINGS, SUNSHADES, AND FLAGS 



Besides the protection from the sun's rays provided by awnings in 

 canoes and on litters, we have definite mention of a device like a 

 parasol carried over the head of a chief or chief tainess. (See p. 599.) 

 This was what a servant held over Tascalusa, chief of the Mobile 

 Indians, when he gave an audience to De Soto in 1540. The memories 

 of our several chroniclers evidently did not retain precisely the same 

 impressions of this. Biedma describes it as "a fly-brush of plumes, so 

 large as to afford his person shelter from the sun" (Bourne, 1904, vol. 2, 

 pp. 17-18). Kanjel says: 



Before this chief there stood always an Indian of graceful mien holding a 

 parasol on a hurdle something like a round and very large fly fan, with a 

 cross similar to that of the Knights of the Order of St. John of Rhodes, in the 

 middle of a black field, and the cross was white. (Bourne, 1904, vol. 2, pp. 120- 

 121.) 



Elvas says that one of the Indians of highest rank about Tascalusa 

 held 



a sort of fan of deerskin which kept the sun from him, round and the size of 

 a shield, quartered with black and white, with a cross made in the middle. 

 From a distance it looked like taffeta, for the colors were very perfect. It was 

 set on a small and very long staff. [He adds] this was the device he bore in 

 his wars. (Robertson, 1933, p. 124.) 



