506 BUREAU OP AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



hangs over their Forehead like a horses fore top. They paint the 

 short Hair and stick it full of Feathers" (Bushnell, 1908, p. 573). It 

 is important because frequently observed on embossed copper objects 

 and engraved shells. 



According to one of my own Creek interpreters, the heads of the 

 old time Creeks were shaved almost like the heads of monks, and the 

 heads of the Creeks belonging to Colonel Jumper's band, which re- 

 joined the rest of the nation after going to Mexico, were shaved exactly 

 like those of monks. It is to be noted that Colonel Jumper was a 

 Chiaha Indian, and that his band was from among the Lower Creeks 

 and no doubt included many Hitchiti. The old Alabama men are said 

 to have had their hair divided into four braids, two of which were al- 

 lowed to fall down behind and two in front, and the end of each braid 

 was fastened with a bead and called he'sis-taisiha, used, however, 

 only on special occasions. From the Gentleman of Elvas we know that 

 the ancient Alabama used bison horns as embellishments to their head 

 gear, at least in war (Robertson, 1933, p. 153). 



Creek customs w^ere carried into Florida and persisted in the penin- 

 sula longer than anywhere else. MacCauley describes them as follows : 



The men cut all their hair close to the head, except a strip about an inch wide, 

 running over the front of the scalp from temple to temple, and another strip, of 

 about the same width, perpendicular to the former, crossing the crown of the 

 head to the nape of the neck. At each temple a heavy tuft is allowed to hang to 

 the bottom of the lobe of the ear. The long hair of the strip crossing to the 

 neck is generally gathered and braided into two ornamental queues. I did not 

 learn that these Indians are in the habit of plucking the hair from their faces. 

 I noticed, however, that the moustache is commonly worn among them and that 

 a few of them are endowed with a rather bold looking combination of moustache 

 and imperial .... For some reason there seems to be a much greater neglect 

 of the care of the hair, and, indeed, of the whole person, in the northern (Musko- 

 gee) than in the southern camps. (MacCauley, 1887, pp. 486-487.) 



But 30 years later, Skinner reports : 



The men now cut their hair short after the fashion of the whites, except that 

 they are prone to leave a lock before the ears. It is only a short time since they 

 have ceased to wear a double scalp-lock ; indeed a few conservatives still maintain 

 the custom. (Skinner, 1913, p. 67.) 



The hair on the scalp of Cooper, one of the Seminole chiefs killed in 

 1837, formed two braids (Foreman, 1932, p. 343). 



Adair (1775, p. 8), speaking probably of the Chickasaw, says that 

 "the men fastened several different sorts of beautiful feathers, fre- 

 quently in tufts, or the wing of a red bird, or the skin of a small hawk, 

 to a lock of hair on the crown of the heads," and he also says that 

 they had a large conch-shell bead, about the length and thickness of 

 a man's forefinger, which they fixed to the crown of their head, as an 

 high ornament (Adair, 1775, p. 170). As noted above, both men and 



