534 BUREAIT OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



Le Challeux also witnesses that "for ornament they have their skin 

 checkered (marquete) in a strange fashion" (Gaffarel, 1875, p. 461 "), 

 and John Spark, chronicler of Hawkins' second voyage had this : 



They do not omit to paint their bodies also with curious knots, or antike worke, 

 as every man in his own fancy deuiseth, which painting, to make it continue the 

 better, they vse with a thorne to pricke their flesh, and dent in the same, whereby 

 the painting may have better hold (Hakluyt, 1847-89, vol. 3, p. 613; S wanton, 

 1922, p. 351). 



Le Moyne both remarks upon the custom and illustrates it in his 

 drawings : 



The reader should be informed that all these chiefs and their wives ornament 

 their skin with punctures arranged so as to make certain designs, as the follow- 

 ing pictures show. Doing this sometimes makes them sick for seven or eight days. 

 They rub the punctured places with a certain herb, which leaves an indelible 

 color. (Le Moyne, 1875, p. 15; Swanton, 1922, p. 351.) 



His pictures exhibit geometrical patterns, as well as suggestions 

 of the scroll and flower work alluded to by Bartram. One of the chiefs 

 has straight and curving lines passing about the body with small circles 

 between. No representations of animals or celestial objects are, how- 

 ever, to be detected. Women were evidently tattooed as well as men, 

 for in his plate 37 (pi. 85 herein) Le Moyne represents a woman tat- 

 tooed in bands about the neck, upper and lower arms, breasts, chest, ab- 

 domen, and upper and lower legs. The pattern is entirely different 

 from those on men in the same series of drawings and resembles the 

 rain pattern so common in our Southwest. The same designs appear 

 again on a chief's wife in Le Moyne's plate 39, perhaps merely another 

 representation of the same person. 



Adair does not describe tattooing at length, but refers to the identi- 

 fication of captive warriors, their rank and their exploits 



by the blue marks over their breasts and arms; they being as legible as our 

 alphabetical characters are to us. Their ink is made of the soot of pitch-pine, 

 which sticks to the inside of a greased earthern pot ; then delineating the parts, 

 like the ancient Picts of Britain, with their wild hieroglyphics, they break through 

 the skin with gair-fish-teeth, and rub over them that dark composition, to register 

 them among the brave ; and the impression is lasting. (Adair, 1775, p. 417.) 



However, erasure of falsely obtained marking was possible : 



I have been told by the Chikkasah, that they formerly erazed any false marks 

 their warriors proudly and privately gave themselves — in order to engage them 

 to give real proofs of their martial virtue, being surrounded by the French and 

 their red allies; and that they degraded them in a public manner, by stretching 

 the marked parts, and rubbing them with the juice of green corn, which in a 

 great degree took out the impression. (Adair, 1775, p. 418.) 



There happens to be no good description of tattooing among the 

 Choctaw, but what French writers tell us of the custom probably 

 applied to them as well as to the Indians on the lower Mississippi 

 whom the French had more immediately under their observation. 



