SWANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 601 



cost his subjects more than a hundred heads. (Dumont, 1753, vol. 1, pp. 195- 

 200; Swanton, 1911, p. 118.) 



And so the last use of the litter was ceremonial, as might have been 

 anticipated, and with the uprooting of the Natchez, it disappeared. 



SADDLES 



Saddles were, of course, a post-Columbian device, but the Indians 

 were not wholly dependent upon traders for them. At least that 

 was true of the Chickasaw and their neighbors, according to Adair : 



They are good saddlers, for they can finish a saddle with their usual in- 

 struments, without any kind of iron to bind the work; but the shape of it is 

 so antiquated and mean, and so much like tliose of the Dutch West-Indians, 

 that a person would be led to imagine they had formerly met, and been taught 

 the art in the same school. The Indians provide themselves with a quantity 

 of white oak boards, and notch them, so as to fit the saddle-trees ; which 

 consist of two pieces before, and two behind, crossing each other in notches, 

 about 3 inches below the top ends of the frame. Then they take a buffalo green 

 hide, covered with its winter curls, and having properly shaped it to the frame, 

 they sew it with large thongs of the same skin, as tight and secure as need 

 be; when it is thoroughly dried, it appears to have all the properties of a 

 cuirass saddle. A trimmed bearskin serves for a pad; and formerly their 

 bridle was only a rope around the horse's neck, with which they guided him 

 at pleasure. (Adair 1775, pp. 425-426.) 



He adds that the Choctaw were using that method in his own 

 time, and also the universal observation that the Indians mounted 

 from what we should consider the "off side." Some Choctaw, with 

 whom he discussed this point, "urged it was most natural, and com- 

 modious, to put the right foot into the stirrup, and at the same 

 time lay hold of the mane with the strongest hand, instead of using 

 either of the farthermost or opposite ones, as they term the left" 

 (Adair, 1775, p. 426). 



BRIDGES 



In the low, marshy country along the coast the Indians had learned 

 to construct rude bridges or causeways. Garcilaso (1723, p. 42) 

 mentions "a wretched bridge of two large trees felled in the water, 

 supported by some stakes fixed in the ground, and some crosspieces 

 of wood, after the fashion of a hand-rail," over the deepest part of a 

 marsh which the Spaniards were obliged to cross in the neighbor- 

 hood of the Withlacoochee. A still more primitive causeway is 

 mentioned just before they came to a town which seems to have 

 been in the province of Capachequi, though Garcilaso (1723, p. 340) 

 does not give the name. Garcilaso, Ranjel, and Elvas all describe a 

 native bridge or system of bridges west of the Mississippi, on a marsh 

 or estuary near the great river and between the provinces of Casqui 

 and Pacaha. Garcilaso (1723, p. 181) refers to these as "wretched 



