NORTH AMERICA. gl§ 
a conical hill or mount. Then they return to town 
In order of folemn proceflion, concluding the day 
with a feflival, which is called the feaft of the 
dead. 
The Chaclaws are called by the traders flats, or 
flat-heads, ail the males having the fore and hind 
part of their fkulls artificially flattened, or com- 
preflfed ; which is effected after the following man- 
ner. As foon as the child is born, the nurfe pro- 
vides a cradle or wooden cafe, hollowed and fa- 
fhioned, to receive the infant, lying proftrate on its 
back, that part of the cafe where the head repofes, 
being falhioned like a brick mould. In this porta- 
ble machine the little boy is fixed, a bag of fand 
being laid on his forehead, which by continual 
gentle compreffion, gives the head fomewhat the 
form of a brick from the temples upwards ; and by 
thefe means they have high and lofty foreheads, 
doping off backwards. Thefe men are not fo neat 
in the trim of their heads, as the Mufcogulges are, 
and they are remarkably flovenly and negligent in 
every part of their drefs ; but otherwife they are 
laid to be ingenious, fenfible and virtuous men ; 
bold and intrepid, yet quiet and peaceable, and 
are acknowledged by the Creeks to be brave. 
They are fuppofed to be mofl ingenious and in- 
duftrious hufbandmen, having large plantations, or 
country farms, where they employ much of their 
time in agricultural improvements, after the man- 
ner of the white people ; by which means their ter- 
ritories are more generally cultivated, and better 
inhabited, than any other Indian republic that we 
know of. The number of their inhabitants is faid 
greatly to exceed the whole Mufcogulge confede- 
racy, although their territories are not a fourth part 
L I 2 as 
