528 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



carefully comb it out .ind dress their hair with clear bears' oil. (Bartram, 

 1909, pp. 29-30.) 



The roots of a plant called tali'wa or tale'wa, perhaps the red 

 root, were used for the same purpose. Gatschet says of this, it is 



a plant growing 1 to 2 feet high on sandy soil, with yellow flower. When the 

 roots are fried in oil, the color of the oil changes to a beautiful, brilliant red 

 of the claret hue and is used among other things to make hair oil. (Gatschet, 

 ms. Creek vocab. ) 



They got these roots from a place near the Natchez town among the 

 Upper Creeks. 



Adair (1775, p. 4), in treating of the customs of his savage neigh- 

 bors, mainly Chickasaw, speaks of "their constant anointing them- 

 selves with bear's oil, or grease, mixt with a certain red root." And 

 regarding bear grease, he goes into more detaili: 



All the Indian Americans, especially the female sex, reckon their bear's oil 

 or grease very valuable, and use it after the same manner as the Asiatics did 

 their fine essences and sweet perfumes; the young warriors and women are 

 uneasy, unless their hair is always shining with it ; which is probably the 

 reason that none of their heads are bald. (Adair, 1775, p. 129.) 



Mention of the use of even bear grease on the hair is conspicuously 

 absent from accounts of the lower Mississippi Indians, and Gravier 

 says of the Tunica : 



Neither men nor women grease or oil their hair like all our Canadian Indians, 

 but this is perhaps from lack of both, bear and deer meat being very rare in 

 their village as well as [the flesh of] all other beasts. (Shea, 1861, p. 734; 

 Swanton, 1911, p. 316.) 



However, scarcity was not sufficiently marked to account by itself for 

 the absence of this practice. 



The Caddo greased their hair like the northern Indians and, in 

 preparation for feasts, put reddened swans' down or ducks' down 

 upon their heads (Joutel in Margry, 1875-86, vol. 3, p. 413), but there 

 is a complete absence of references to the use of body grease as distinct 

 from paint. 



BODY PAINT 



Body paint was resorted to particularly in preparing for war and 

 ball games, but was part of a man's make-up on all official or semi- 

 official occasions. Red is the color mentioned most often, and red 

 paint was quite uniformly obtained by heating ochrous earths. Red 

 body paint was in use among the Timucua Indians about Tampa 

 Bay when De Soto's army landed, and it is constantly mentioned by 

 later writers. Bartram (1791, p. 501) states that the head, neck, and 

 breast of the Indians of his acquaintance (Creeks, Seminole, and 

 Cherokee) were painted with vermilion. Adair (1775, p. 171) speak- 

 ing particularly of the Chickasaw, mentions the amount of this as one 



