:SWANTON] INDIAN TRIBES OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 345

and other coastal tribes were less warlike and more cowardly than
the tribes higher up the Mississippi.
 Their houses were like those of their neighbors, i. e., they consisted
mainly of palmetto leaves over a framework of poles, and like them,
the houses of the chiefs were larger than those of the common people.
According to Benjamin Paul, there was a smoke hole, which could
be closed when the weather was bad, but if this feature was ancient it
constituted a distinct advance on the Mississippi houses usually repre-
sented, which are generally without any opening other than the door.
At the same time Iberville records smoke holes in the Bayogoula
houses, and his authority is among the best. The ancient garments
are no longer remembered, but Gatschet learned the following re-
garding personal adornment:
 The Shetimnsha men wore the hair long, and fastened a piece of lead to the
end of the tress behind for the purpose of keeping the head erect [?]. They
adorned themselves with much care and artistic taste, and tattooed their legs.
arms, and faces in wavy punctured lines. They sported necklaces, finger rings,
bracelets, nose rings, and earrings.
 The warriors enjoyed a peculiar kind of distinction, as follows: Certain men,
especially appointed for the purpose, had to paint the knees of the warriors
with pulverized charcoal, and this was made to stick by scarifying the skin
with the jaw of a small species of garfish until it began to bleed slightly, after
which the coloring matter was rubbed on. This manipulation had to be re-
peated every year. *
 The women wore their hair in plaits or tresses, ornamented with plumes. A
portion of the hair was wound in a coil about the head and secured by pins.
Their ornaments were bracelets, earrings, and finger rings. In painting them-
selves they used only the red and white colors."
 Anciently many of these beads were made of shell, but the writer
was informed of another kind made of stone which came from the
northwest. Fine pieces of copper were hammered into bracelets,
shoulder pieces, and breast pieces. Others were worn about the waist,
and the chief carried a piece upon his forehead. Nothing nearer
like a hat was employed. The nose ornaments were sometimes made
of gold or silver, which Benjamin Paul affirmed to be of native origin,
an evident error.
 Regarding their economic life Doctor Gatschet says:
 In their aboriginal state the tribe supported themselves mainly by vegetable
food; but they also ate the products of the hunt, which consisted of deer and
other smaller animals. The women had to provide for the household by collect-
ing pistaches, wild beans, a plant called kfipinu (ka'ntak in Cha"hta), and
another called woman's potatoes, the seed of the pond lily (flktd),b grains of
the palmetto, the rhizoma of the common Sagittaria, and that of the Sagittaria
with the large leaf, persimmons (plaquemine in Creole, nfinu in Shetimasha).
They also planted, to some extent, maize, sweet potatoes, and, after the arrival
of the whites, wheat, or procured these articles by exchanging their homemade
baskets for them.


* Said to taste like a hickory nut.-J. R. S.


- Trans. .nthrop. Sec. Was~h., 11, 5-6.