SwANTON] INiDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTEiRN UNIITED STATES 471 



A little later Swan (1855, p. 275) stated of the Creek women in 

 general that they "wear no clothes in summer, except one single, sim- 

 ple, short petticoat, of blue stroud, tied around the waist, and reach- 

 ing only to the upper part of the knees." 



In his description of the Choctaw, the anonymous Frenchman tells 

 us that the women made a fabric of bison hair and the fiber from 

 a very strong herb spun together. 



This fabric is double like the two-sided handkerchiefs and thick as can- 

 vas, half an ell wide and three quarters long. That serves them as a skirt. 

 (Swanton, 1918, p. 68.) 



It is not quite clear whether this refers only to the women but, from 

 what we learn elsewhere, it would seem so. 



In the dress of Florida women we encounter an innovation be- 

 cause they sometimes wore garments of the long Spanish moss instead 

 of skins, although these were barely mentioned by Catesby in a quo- 

 tation given above: 



The women also for their apparell vse painted skinnes, but most of them 

 gownes of mosse, somewhat longer than our mosse, which they sowe together 

 artificially, and make the same surplesse wise. ( Hakluyt, 1847-89, vol. 3, p. 613 ; 

 Swanton, 1922, p. 346, quoting Spark.) 



The good Bishop Calderon found 400 women in the Timucua 

 missions "naked from the waist up and from the knees down" and 

 left them clothed from neck to feet in "a pearl-colored foliage of 

 trees," which was evidently the tree moss (Wenhold, 1936, p. 12). 

 Challeux is the only one of the French colonists who mentions skins 

 along with the moss : 



The woman girds herself with a little covering of the skin of a deer or 

 other animal, the knot saddling the left side above the thigh, in order to cover 

 the most private parts. (Gaffarel, 1875, p. 461; Swanton, 1922, p. 346.) 



The same material was used by Calusa women (Fontaneda in Doc. 

 Inedit., 1866, vol. 5, pp. 632-533; Swanton, 1922, p. 387), and in 

 1595 San Miguel thus describes the clothing worn by Indian women 

 about St. Simons Island on the Georgia coast : 



The dress of the women is in the style of a cloak (giieypil) and skirts of the 

 long moss (pastle) which grows on trees, made like a fringe. The cloak hangs 

 from the neck to a point below the waist, and the skirts from the waist to 

 the ground. (Garcia, 1902, p. 193.) 



But a chief visited by San Miguel "in place of the common clothing 

 of moss" had his two wives wear deerskins (Garcia, 1902, p. 194). 



At a considerably later date, Dickenson notes moss garments in 

 use in the Florida towns occupied by refugee Indians from this 

 same Georgia coast. 



The women natives of these towns clothe themselves with the moss of trees, 

 making gowns and petticoats thereof, which at a distance, or in the night, 

 look very neat. (Dickenson, 1803, p. 93; Swanton, 1922, p. 347.) 



