472 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



As far north as the Carolinas, Lawson (1860, p. 43) observed moss used 

 as clothing when the women were mourning. 



There are several brief description of the Natchez costume. 



Du Pratz : 



In the warm season the women wear only half an ell of Limbourg. They 

 wind this cloth about their bodies, and are well covered from the waist to the 

 knees. When they lack Limbourg they employ for the same purpose a deerskin. 



Dumont says this was called an "alconand," from Choctaw alhkuna, 

 ''gown." Sometimes this garment was made of mulberry bark. (Du- 

 mont, 1753, vol. 1, pp. 137-139; Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, pp. 

 190-197; Swanton, 1911, pp. 52-53; Kead, 1931, p. 80.) 



The same garment is noted among the Bayogoula and the Tunica. 

 (Margry, 1875-86, vol. 4, pp. 169-172, 259-262; Shea, 1861, pp. 80-81, 

 134; Swanton, 1911, pp. 276, 316.) 



As we have already seen, the women living in southern Georgia 

 in De Soto's time sometimes wore besides a skirt a second woven 

 garment which passed over the shoulder, the right arm being left 

 free (Robertson, 1933, p. 76). Women's cloaks made of tree moss 

 were worn on the Georgia coast, as may be seen by the quotation 

 from San Miguel given above. Except for a very general state- 

 ment by Garcilaso, the earliest mention of a cloak or coat of skin is 

 by Barlowe in relating his dealings with the coast Indians of North 

 Carolina. The wife of Granganimeo, the king's brother, "had on her 

 backe a long cloake of leather, with the furre side next to her body, 

 and before her a piece of the same" (Burrage, 1906, p. 232) . Strachey 

 remarks that 



the better sort of [Virginia] women cover themselves (for the most part) 

 all over with skin mantells, finely drest, shagged and fringed at the skyrt, 

 carved and coloured with some pretty work, or the proportion of beasts, fowle, 

 tortayses, or other such like imagry, as shall best please or expresse the 

 fancy of the wearer. ( Strachey, 1849, p. 58. ) 



They also wore mantles of turkey feathers and feathers of other 

 birds, and the wife of a chief named Pipisco had a "mantell, which 

 they call puttawus, which is like a side cloake, made of blew feath- 

 ers, so arteficyally and thick sowed togither, that it seemed like a 

 deepe purple satten, and is very smooth and sleeke" (Strachey, 1849, 

 p. 58). The women of the Siouan tribes wore, in severe weather, a 

 match coat, the name given in Virginia to the garment we would call 

 an overcoat. These were made of hair, specific mention being 

 made of opossum hair, fur, feathers, or European cloth (Lawson, 

 1860, pp. 43, 311). The use of opossum hair in such large quan- 

 tities seems a bit doubtful. Among the Creek and Cherokee women, 

 Bartram (1792, p. 501) noted "a little short waistcoat, usually made 

 of calico, printed linen, or fine cloth, decorated with lace, beads, &c." 

 This is the ilokf a of the Alabama Indians. 



