III. PHYSICAL SETTING

C. Human Figures

3. Colbert’s Partisans

b) Dress Worn and Arms Carried by the Chickasaws and Mixed-Bloods

(3) Leggings

The Chickasaws, like other nations of the region, wore leggings. “They were made in two pieces, one wrapped around each leg and brought up high enough so as to be fastened to the belt by means of leather cords, while at the lower ends they were inserted under the upper edges of the moccasins.” Their principal use was to protect the wearer from bushes and undergrowth.

Bartram observed that the leggings “reach from the ancle to the calf, and are ornamented with lace, beads, silver bells, etc.”[68]

Adair reported:

The men wear, for ornament, and the convenience of hunting, thin deer-skin boots [leggings], well smoked, that reach so high up their thighs, as with their jackets to secure them from the brambles and braky thickets. They sew them about five inches from the edges, which are formed into tassels, to which they fasten fawns trotters, and small pieces of tinkling metal, or wild turkey-cock-spurs.[69]

(4) Moccasins

The moccasin was worn in traveling some distance from home, and on war and trading expeditions. Bartram described the Creek moccasins:
“The stillepica or moccasin defends and adorns the feet; it seems to be in imitation of the ancient boskin or sandal, very ingeniously made of deer skins, dressed very soft, and curiously ornamented according to fancy.”

Describing the Chickasaw moccasin, Adair wrote: “They make their shoes for common use, out of the skins of the bear and elk, well dressed and smoked, to prevent hardening; and those for ornament, out of deer-skins, done in a like manner: but they chiefly go bare footed, and always bare-headed.”[70]

(5) Bags and Purses

The southern Indians, Swanton has written, often “carried a bag or pouch hung at one side in which were kept tobacco, knives, pipes, and all sorts of small personal belongings.”

Adair reported the Choctaws “Weave shot-pouches, which have raised work inside and outside.”

A Choctaw informed Swanton that “a small pouch for powder and shot was generally made of a gourd shaped like a citron upon which the skin of an otter, raccoon, or mink had been shrunk and which had afterward been hardened.”[71]

(6) Manner of Dressing Hair

Most southeastern Indians carefully removed their hair from all parts of the body but the head. Adair reported that the Chickasaw men “fastened several different sorts of beautiful feathers, frequently in tufts, or the wing of a red bird, or the skin of a small hawk, to a lock of hair on the crown of the heads.” He also noted that they “had a large conch-shell bead, about the length and thickness of a man’s forefinger, which they fixed to the crown of their heads, as an high ornament.”[72]