490 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



Their designs are rather similar to some of those which one finds in Gothic 

 architecture. They are composed of straight lines which form right angles 

 where they meet, which a common person would call the corner of a square. 

 They also make designs of the same style on the mantles and coverings which 

 they fashion out of mulberry bark. (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, pp. 100, 

 184-185.) 



Dumont says that porcupine quills were used by Natchez women 

 interlaced in their hair by way of ornament (Dumont, 1753, vol. 1, 

 p. 137; Swanton, 1911, p. 51). According to Timberlake (1927, pp. 

 30, 50-51), porcupine quills were employed in the ornamentation of 

 Cherokee pipes and moccasins. 



Bartram (1792, p. 499) also mentions porcupine-quill ornamenta- 

 tion on the headbands of Creek Indians, which at least proves that 

 this type of decoration was known to the tribe, but it is altogether 

 unknown whether it was a native industry. 



WORK IN METAL 



The principal metal used by all our Indians in pre-Columbian 

 times was copper, and its use was very ancient, though it is probable 

 that it was not as extensively used at the time when America was 

 discovered as when the Southeast was thoroughly colonized in the 

 eighteenth century. Indeed, though it must have been widely em- 

 ployed when De Soto entered the country, the chronicles of his ex- 

 pedition contain surprisingly few references to it. Elvas tells us 

 of copper hatchets seen at Cofitachequi said to have a mixture of gold, 

 and both he and Garcilaso report a rumor that reached the Spaniards 

 while they were on Tennessee River, that in a province to the north 

 named Chisca were mines of copper, or at least a highly colored 

 yellow metal, which the explorers and the readers of their explora- 

 tions back home were only too happy to think might be gold. (Rob- 

 ertson, 1933, p. 109; Garcilaso, 1723, p. 141.) It is quite certain that 

 the province of Chisca was occupied by Yuchi Indians, who may have 

 been middle men in transmitting copper from the mines about Lake 

 Superior. That it was an article of trade is stated by Garcilaso. 

 The Spaniards met some copper merchants at Cofitachequi, and the 

 metal proved, to their considerable disappointment, to be nothing 

 more valuable (Garcilaso, 1723, p. 129). We also find it an article of 

 trade beyond the Mississippi River, for some Spaniards who accom- 

 panied native traders in an expedition westward from Capaha 

 (Pacaha) into a sterile and poorly populated country brought back 

 from it six loads of fossil salt and some copper (Garcilaso, 1723, 

 p. 187). 



Whatever may have been the extent to which copper was employed 

 in 1539-43, we seemingly find an abundance of it in Florida 25 years 

 later, though there happens to be no allusion to it in the narrative 



