808 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY I Bull. 137 



to back along the top of the head and a fringe of hair along the 

 forehead. The usage of the Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Yuchi was the 

 same, and it is interesting to find that medicine men among the Al- 

 gonquians treated their hair similarly. On the other hand, the Choc- 

 taw allowed the hair on their heads to grow long and were known as 

 "Long Hairs" from that circumstance. In later times we are told 

 specifically that the nothern Choctaw, influenced by the Chickasaw, 

 had altered this custom. From one reference in Le Moyne it seems 

 that the custom of roaching had entered Florida. Since the Timucua 

 used their hair as a temporary quiver for arrows, however, it is evi- 

 dent that it was less drastically treated than by the Creeks and their 

 neighbors. It was assumed that the Pensacola tribe, "Hair People," 

 was so named because of the same custom as that which obtained 

 among their neighbors, the Choctaw. Some of the Mississippi tribes 

 seem to have roached their hair, or at least shaved it very short, while 

 others wore it long and some of them cut it on one side like the 

 Virginia Indians. This last treatment was originally intended to 

 avoid the danger of entangling the hair with the bowstring. Some 

 of the Caddo had the same custom. 



While shell beads were used everywhere, they were resorted to most 

 in the northeast among the Algonquian and Siouan peoples, where they 

 had probably become a medium of barter in the prehistoric period. 

 Shell gorgets, judging by the archeological remains along with the 

 historic notices, were used principally in a belt extending from the 

 Sound region of North Carolina to the country of the Caddo, from 

 whose territory many excellent specimens have been recovered. As 

 noted above, the references to decorative work with porcupine quills 

 probably apply to northern Indians visiting the southern country 

 temporarily or to objects obtained in trade. Remains of this animal 

 are not reported farther south than Tennessee, and there they must 

 have died out at a remote period. Objects of this kind were, therefore, 

 intrusive, as was nearly all the gold which came in Spanish vessels 

 wrecked on the Florida coast. Palmetto-leaf hats were sometimes 

 worn by girls in Florida, and other unique objects in this regiojj were 

 earrings made of fish bladders dyed red. Cherokee, Creek, and Chick- 

 asaw dandies cut slits around the rims of their ears and wound copper 

 wire through the openings, thereby expanding the ears enormously. 

 Spike-shaped ear ornaments are reported in historic times mainly 

 along the lower Mississippi but anciently the custom seems to have ex- 

 tended farther east. The Creeks, Alabama, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Ba- 

 yogoula, Caddo, and Chitimacha wore nose ornaments and so did a few 

 Virginia Indians but they were ordinarily absent elsewhere and cer- 

 tainly so in Florida. The eastern Indians generally employed a kind 

 of hair dye made from the puccoon root along with bear grease, but 



