H. H. Bancroft (f), citing authorities, says the central Californians (north of San Francisco bay) formerly wore the down of Asclepias (?) (white) as an emblem of royalty; and in the same volume, p. 691, it is told that the natives of Guatemala wore red feathers in their hats, the nobles only wearing green ones.
The notes immediately following are about the significant use of color, not readily divisible into headings.
Belden (c) furnishes the following remarks:
The Yanktons, Sioux, Santees, and Cheyennes use a great deal of paint. A Santee squaw paints her face the same as a white woman does, only with less taste. If she wishes to appear particularly taking she draws a red streak half an inch wide from ear to ear, passing it over the eyes, the bridge of the nose, and along the middle of the cheek. When a warrior desires to be left alone he takes black paint or lampblack and smears his face; then he draws zigzag lines from his hair to his chin by scraping off the paint with his nails. This is a sign that he is trapping, is melancholy, or in love.
A Sioux warrior who is courting a squaw usually paints his eyes yellow and blue and the squaw paints hers red. I have known squaws to go through the painful operation of reddening the eye-balls, that they might appear particularly fascinating to the young men. A red stripe drawn horizontally from one eye to the other means that the young warrior has seen a squaw he could love if she would reciprocate his attachment.
As narrated by H. H. Bancroft, the Los Angeles county Indian girls paint the cheeks sparingly with red ocher when in love. This also prevails among the Arikara, at Fort Berthold, Dakota.
La Potherie (e) says that the Indian girls of a tribe near Hudson bay, when they have arrived at the age of puberty, at the time of its sign, daub themselves with charcoal or a black stone, and in far distant Yucatan, according to Bancroft (h), the young men restricted themselves to black until they were married, indulging afterwards in varied and bright colored figures.
The color green is chiefly used symbolically as that of grass, with reference to which Father De Smet’s MS. on the dance of the Tinton Sioux contains these remarks: “Grass is the emblem of charity and abundance; from it the Indians derive the food for their horses and it fattens the wild animals of the plains, from which they derive their subsistence.”
Brinton (d) gives the following summary: