SWANTON] INDIANS OP THE SOIJTHEASTEKN UNITED STATES 537 



They let their nails grow long both on fingers and toes, cutting (or scraping) 

 the former away, however, at the sides (with a certain shell), so as to leave 

 them very sharp, the men especially; and when they take one of the enemy 

 they sink their nails deep in his forehead, and tear down the skin, so as to 

 wound and blind him. (Le Moyne, 1875, p. 8, 15; S wanton, 1922, p. 352.) 



This custom extended to the neighboring Guale Indians and to the 

 southern Siouans, but, speaking of the women of the North Carolina 

 coast, particularly those of Secotan, Hariot says, "their nayles are not 

 longe, as the women of Florida" (Garcia, 1902, p. 193; Hariot, 1893, 

 pi. 4). 



The buzzard men and women of the Choctaw and some other tribes, 

 whose gruesome task it was to separate the bones of the dead from 

 their flesh, also kept their fingernails long as an aid in their pro- 

 fession. 



HEAD DEFORMATION 



Accidental occipital head flattening caused by the method in which 

 infants were tied to the cradleboard by some tribes was widespread. 

 Intentional head deformation also existed over a very wide area, and 

 skulls deformed in this manner have been found by archeologists in 

 sections from which it was absent in the historic period. Our first 

 historical reference is by Garcilaso de la Vega in his description of 

 a province in southern Arkansas, probably south of Hot Springs: 



Both men and women have ugly faces, and though they are well propor- 

 tioned they deform themselves by deliberate distortion of their persons. Their 

 heads are" incredibly long and tapering on top, being made thus artificially by 

 binding them up from birth to the age of nine or ten years. (Garcilaso, 

 1723, pp. 190-191.) 



Skulls have since been found on Caddo sites deformed in this 

 manner (Walker, W. M., 1935, p. 4, pis. 1-3) but it is surprising 

 to find that when the French entered Louisiana at the end of the 

 seventeenth century the Caddo seem to have given up the custom, 

 and instead it was found flourishing among the tribes along the lower 

 Mississippi. An anonymous memoir printed at Luxemburg thus 

 describes the process of head flattening, seemingly from observation 

 among the Natchez : 



They have . . . their heads pointed and shaped almost like miters. They 

 are not born so; this is a charm which is given them during their early years. 

 What a mother does to the head of her infant in order to force its tender bones 

 to assume this shape is almost beyond belief. She lays the infant on a cradle, 

 which is nothing more than the end of a board on which is spread a piece of 

 animal skin; one extremity of this board has a hole in which the head is put 

 and it is lower than the rest. The infant being laid down on this entirely naked, 

 she pushes the back of its head into this hole and applies to it on the forehead 

 and under the head masses of clay which she binds with all her strength be- 

 tween two little boards. The infant cries, turns completely black, and the strain 

 it is made to suffer is such that a white, slimy fluid is seen to come out of its 

 nose and ears at the time when the mother presses on its forehead. It sleeps 



