In all these dances, ceremonial visits, and receptions of strangers the religious element can be discerned more or less plainly. The Indians west of the Mississippi with whom Father Hennepin was a prisoner in 1680, and who appear to have been a branch of the Sioux (Issati or Santee and Nadouessan), had a grand dance to signalize the killing of a bear. On this occasion, which was participated in by the "principaux chefs et guerriers," we learn that there was this to be noted in their dress: "ayant même leurs cheveux frottez d'huile d'ours & parsemez de plumes, rouges & blanches & les têtes chargées de duvet d'oiseaux."[417]
"Swan's and bustard's down" was used by the Accancess [i.e., the Arkansas of the Siouan stock] in their religious ceremonies.[418]
Of the war dress of the members of the Five Nations we learn from an early writer: "Their heads [previously denuded of all hair except that of the crown] are painted red down to the eye-brows and sprinkled over with white down."[419]
The Indians of Virginia at their war dances painted themselves to make them more terrible: "Pour se rendre plus terriblee, ils sément des plumes, du duvet, ou du poil de quelque bête sur la peinture toute fraiche."[420] Down was also used by the medicine-men of the Carib.[421] The down of birds was used in much the same way by the tribes of Cumaná, a district of South America not far from the mouth of the Orinoco, in the present territory of Venezuela;[422] by the Tupinambis, of Brazil, who covered the bodies of their victims with it;[423] by the Chiribchi, of South America,[424] and by the tribes of the Isthmus of Darien.[425] This down has also been used by some of the Australians in their sacred dances.[426] "The hair, or rather the wool upon their heads, was very abundantly powdered with white powder.... They powder not only their heads, but their beards too."[427]
In China "there is a widespread superstition that the feathers of birds, after undergoing certain incantations, are thrown up into the air, and being carried away by the wind work blight and destruction wherever they alight."
The down of birds seems not to have been unknown in Europe. To this day it is poured upon the heads of the bride and groom in weddings among the Russian peasantry.[428]
This leads up to the inquiry whether or not the application of tar and feathers to the person may not at an early period have been an act of religious significance, perverted into a ridiculous and infamous punishment by a conquering and unrelenting hostile sect. The subject certainly seems to have awakened the curiosity of the learned Buckle, whose remarks may as well be given.
Richard, during his stay in Normandy (1189), made some singular laws for regulating the conduct of the pilgrims in their passage by sea. "A robber, convicted of theft, shall be shaved in the manner of a champion; and boiling pitch poured upon his head, and the feathers of a pillow shaken over his head to distinguish him; and be landed at the first port where the ships shall stop."[429]
The circumstances mentioned in the text respecting tarring and feathering is a fine subject for comment by the searchers into popular antiquities.[430]