SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 511 



pride, certaine fowles' leggs, eagles, hawkes, turkeys, etc., with beasts' clawes, 

 beares, arrahacounes [raccoons], squirrells, etc. The clawes thrust through they 

 let hang upon the cheeke to the full view, and some of their men there be who 

 will weare in these holes a small greene and yellow-coloured live snake, neere 

 half a yard in length, which crawling and lapping himself about his neck 

 oftentymes familiarly, he sufifereth to kisse his lippes. Others weare a dead 

 ratt tyed by the tayle, and such like conundrums. (Strachey, 1849, p. 67.) 



Smith covers the same ground in abbreviated fashion. He men- 

 tions only three holes in the ears. For "bracelets" we should say 

 "strings," and the copper ornaments seem to have been beads (Smith, 

 John, Tyler ed., 1907, p. 99). Beverley (1705, bk. 3, pis. 2, 4) makes 

 mention of "a fine shell with pearl drops" worn at the ears by men, and 

 the skin of some dark-colored bird worn in the ear by conjurers. 



When men of the Piedmont country went to war they wore in 

 their ears feathers, the wings of birds, rings, copper, wampum, and 

 probably at an earlier date roanoke. Some of these Indians had in 

 the same place "great bobs . . . and sometimes in the holes thereof 

 they put eagles and other birds' feathers, for a trophy" (Lawson, 

 1860, pp. 312, 314). Catesby remarks that "some of the modish wear 

 a large bunch of downy feathers thrust through a hole made in one 

 and sometimes both ears." Warriors wore "rings of copper, Peak 

 and Wampum in their ears" (Catesby, 1731-43, vol. 2, pp. viii, ix) . 



Peculiar to the Timucua, or at least to the Florida Indians, was the 

 following ear ornament: 



All the men and women have the ends of their ears pierced, and pass through 

 them small oblong fish-bladders, which when inflated shine like pearls, and 

 which, being dyed red, look like a light-colored carbuncle. (Le Moyne, 1875, p. 

 14; Swanton, 1922, p. 348.) 



In the drawings by Le Moyne, writer of the above words, some 

 Indians are shown with staple-shaped earrings, one with a true ring, 

 and one with the claws of some bird thrust through the ear, remind- 

 ing us of the Virginia custom. Ribault observed small plates of 

 copper hung to the ears of a Timucua Indian "with which they 

 wipe the sweat from their bodies" (French, 1875, p. 178; Swanton, 

 1922, p. 350). 



Gushing found at Key Marco 



ear buttons, plates, spikes and plugs. The ear buttons were chiefly of wood, and 

 were of special interest— the most elaborate articles of jewelry w^e found. They 

 were shaped like huge cuff buttons — some, two inches in diameter, resembling the 

 so-called spool-shaped copper bosses or ear ornaments of the mound builders. But 

 a few of these were made in parts, so that the rear disc could be, by a partial 

 turn, slipped off from the shank, to facilitate insertion into the slits of the ear 

 lobe. The front discs were rimmed with white shell rings, within which were 

 narrower circlets of tortoise shell, and within these, in turn, little round, very 

 dark and slightly protuberant wooden bosses or plugs, covered with gum or varnish 

 and highly polished, so that the whole front of the button exactly resembled a 

 huge round, gleaming eyeball. Indeed, this resemblance was so striking that both 



