SwANTON] INDIANS OP THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 619 



white, the tail like a rat, the feet like a monkey, which has a pouch 

 under the belly in which it brings forth its young and nourishes them." 

 This opossum was painted in many x^laces in red and black so that 

 Iberville inferred it was a form of their deity, but in view of the 

 general repugnance to this animal in the Southeast this seems unlikely. 

 (Margry, 1875-86, vol 4, pp. 169-172; Swanton, 1911, p. 275.) 



Penicaut, our only authority on the Acolapissa temple aside from 

 De Batz, notes : 



There are at the door of the temple wooden figures of birds ; there are In the 

 temple a quantity of little idols, as well of wood as of stone, which represent 

 dragons, serpents, and varieties of frogs, which they keep inclosed in three 

 coffers which are in the temple, and of which the great chief has the key. 

 (Margry, 1875-86, vol. 5, pp. 467-469; Swanton, 1911, p. 282.) 



There are said to have been no carved or painted objects in the 

 Chitimacha house (or houses) of worship (Gatschet, 1883, pp. 6-7; 

 Swanton, 1911, p. 352), but Gatschet was informed by one of the 

 women from whom he obtained his vocabulary of the Atakapa lan- 

 guage that there was a dance house in the village of the head chief Lo 

 surrounded by a picket fence, and containing statues, stuffed animals, 

 and other objects (Gatschet, 1932, p. 24). 



Elvas mentions "figures of babies and birds" made of pearls fomid 

 in the temple of Cofitachcqui (Eobertson, 1933, p. 94). 



In the "Province of Guacane," by which we may imderstand the 

 Caddo tribe Nacanish, Garcilaso's informants told him the Spaniards 

 found that the houses were ornamented with wooden crosses, and he 

 attributed this device to what the people had heard of Narvaez, but 

 this tribe was too far inland to render the suggestion plausible 

 (Garcilaso, 1723, pp. 200-201). 



A considerable number of w^ooden tablets carved in low relief and 

 sometimes painted have been exhumed in Florida by Gushing and 

 Stirling. The former describes as follows the best specimen of this 

 class of objects which he f omid at Key Marco ; 



The most elaborate of them all was the one already referred to . . . for it, 

 like the first specimen found, had been decorated with paint (as at one time 

 probably had been all of the others). Ui)on the head or shovel-shaped portion 

 were two eye-like circles surrounding central dots. At the extreme end was a 

 rectangular line enclosing lesser marginal lines, as though to represent con- 

 ventionally a mouth enclosing nostrils or teeth or other details. The body or 

 lower and flatter portion was painted from the shoulders downward toward 

 the taillike tenon with a double-lined triangular figure, and there were three 

 broad transverse black bands leading out from this toward either edge. On 

 the obverse or flat under surface of the tablet were painted equidistantly, in 

 a line, four black circles enclosing white centers, exactly corresponding to other 

 figures of the sort found on various objects in the collection, and from their 

 connection, regarded by me as word-signs, or symbols of the four regions. 

 (Gushing, 1896, p. 382.) 



