SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 817 



house was circular. They seem to have used leggmgs more often than 

 the surrounding tribes. Women's garments were partly of skins and 

 partly of textiles, except on the Georgia coast where tree moss was 

 often employed. They shaved their heads along the sides leaving a 

 roach at the top and a fringe of hairs along the forehead. Some 

 porcupine-quill work Avas found among them but this was evidently 

 imported. The male dandies enlarged their ears by twisting copper 

 wire around the rim of the ear, and nose ornaments were worn. Only 

 prostitutes among the women painted their faces. The heads were 

 not intentionally deformed. Wooden images were used in the square 

 grounds. Leadership depended in some measure on clan status. 

 Totemic clans were highly developed and moieties existed but they 

 did not govern marriage as rigidly as among some other tribes. In 

 cases of adultery both of the guilty parties were punished. Bodies 

 of the dead were flexed and buried under the house floors. The hair 

 was reddened by means of the same root as that used by the eastern 

 Siouans. Certain plants were substituted for salt. The war titles 

 conferred consisted for the most part of certain distinct types formed 

 of two words (except where the diminutive suffix was employed), the 

 second being usually hadjo, fiksiko, imathla, tastanagi, yahola, or 

 miko. Strict mourning was imposed upon widows and widowers, 

 particularly on the former. The "spiral fire" was used during coun- 

 cils. In stories of the incorporated Alabama tribe recurs the legend 

 of the mythic tailed men. The calumet ceremony had reached them 

 but only at a very late period. 



The Choctaw were another typical Muskhogean tribe but with a 

 somewhat distinct set of characters. They had broader heads and 

 faces than the Creeks and were credited with a more pacific disposi- 

 tion. Their month names were, however, similar in type to those 

 used by the Creeks. They depended upon agriculture for their food 

 more than any of the other southern tribes, and raised enough corn 

 to employ part in trade with their neighbors. They had the circular, 

 clayed-up winter house and an oblong, or rather oval, summer house 

 with two smoke holes. The Choctaw men anciently allowed their hair 

 to grow long, and the bone-pickers or "Buzzard Men" kept their finger- 

 nails untrimmed. They were addicted to the custom of frontal head 

 deformation. Wooden stools seem to have been known to them as 

 well as to their neighbors. The tribe was democratic and the chiefs' 

 powers limited. There were no totemic clans but moieties were highly 

 developed. The mortuary process was a long one, the body of the 

 deceased being first placed upon a scaffold, the flesh subsequently 

 removed from its bones and the latter placed in a hamper and kept 

 in the dwelling of the dead man's relatives until a considerable num- 

 ber of baskets of bones had been accumulated in this way, when all of 



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