SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 515 



saw. The Creek custom was probably identical or he would have 

 mentioned the fact. Bartram says nothing about this usage, but the 

 Alabama, who constituted part of the Creek Confederation, continued 

 to wear silver rings through their noses within the remembrance of 

 people living in 1910, or at least until a time from which a clear tradi- 

 tional rememberance could be transmitted. After having pierced the 

 septum, they inserted a sharp iron, sometimes an awl, in the opening 

 until the wound was healed when they replaced it with a silver ring. 

 It is worthy of note that the nose and ears were usually pierced in cold 

 weather when the parts were somewhat numb, making the pain less 

 intense. For Koasati, Creek, and Shawnee instances, see plates 26 ; 33 ; 

 47, fig. 2. 



We also know that the northern neighbors of the Creeks, the Chero- 

 kee, were addicted to the practice : 



The Indian nations are agreed in the custom of thus adorning themselves with 

 beads of various sizes and colours; sometimes wrought in garters, sashes, neck- 

 laces, and in strings round their wrists; and so from the crown of their heads 

 sometimes to the cartilage of the nose. [Farther on he mentions the nose as one 

 of the places to which the old time Indians tied] such coarse diamonds as their 

 own hill country produced. [And again] They formerly wore nose-rings, or 

 jewels, both in the northern and southern regions of America. . . . and in some 

 places they still observe it. At present, they hang a piece of battered silver or 

 pewter, or a large bead to the nostril, like the European method of treating swine 

 to prevent them from rooting the earth. (Adair, 1775, pp. 178-180.) 



The Cherokee in Timberlake's time wore silver pendants and rings at 

 the nose as well as the ears (Timberlake, Williams ed., 1927, p. 76) . If 

 our authorities may be relied upon, the distribution of nose ornaments 

 on the lower Mississippi was very peculiar, since there is no mention of 

 them among the Natchez or Tunica or any of their immediate neigh- 

 bors, but only by the Bayogoula, far down the river, and the Chiti- 

 macha, their neighbors on the west. In this last case our information, 

 too, is recent, from Dr. Gatschet's and my informants, who said that 

 warriors used to wear these ornaments and that they were sometimes 

 made of gold or silver (Gatschet, 1883, pp. 5-6 ; S wanton, 1911, p. 345) . 

 The Bayogoula reference, on the other hand, is from the records of 

 the first visit to this tribe by Europeans. The French observed that 

 the natives had their noses pierced "to which there hangs a piece of 

 coral of the size of the finger" (Margry, 1875-86, vol. 4, pp. 260-261 ; 

 Swanton, 1911, p. 276) . The use of these seems to have been confined 

 to the men, as was the case with the Chitimacha. The Caddo Indians 

 were noted for this type of ornament (Swanton, 1942, pp. 146-147). 



LABRETS 



The only mention of lip piercing in historic times is by Cabeza de 

 Vaca, who reports that some of the wild tribes of the section visited 



