“The holes in the ears of the men and women were of different sizes, and served to distinguish the sexes;[[14]] those in the ears of the women being small, whilst the men sometimes cut a slit almost entirely around the rim of the ear, which ‘they distend and stretch as much as possible,’ so much so, in fact, that the loop hangs almost to the shoulder.[[15]] Not unfrequently the outer edge of skin is torn apart; and then the Indian is plunged into the depths of humiliation until, by paring the broken ends, they can be made to grow together.[[16]] Heckwelder[[17]] reports an instance of an Indian, who was with difficulty prevented from killing himself on account of an accident of this character; and he adds that it was owing to the frequency of such accidents that the custom of stretching the holes in the ears to this enormous extent was falling into desuetude.
“Of the articles worn in the ears and nose, our accounts are full and explicit. To a certain extent they were the same—might in fact have been used indiscriminately; and yet such an arrangement must have been one-sided, for whilst the nose ornaments could be used in the ears, there were so many worn in the ears that could not be adapted to the nose, that it seems advisable to consider them separately. Beginning then with nose-rings, as this entire class is usually called, we find that, relatively speaking, they were few in number, and that the material of which they were generally made was shell. The savages, for instance, whom Sagard[[18]] saw in Canada, had a blue bead (patinotre) of good size which hung down from above, on the upper lip. On the Atlantic Coast a ‘large pearl, or a piece of silver, gold, or wampum’[[19]] was used; and in ‘the interior parts’ of the country, sea-shells were much worn and were ‘reckoned very ornamental.’[[20]] In the Gulf States, ‘such coarse diamonds as their own hilly country produced were, in old times, fastened with a deer’s sinew to their hair, nose, ears and maccasenes.’ They also, so it is said, formerly used nose-rings and jewels; but, ‘at present they hang a piece of battered silver or pewter, or a large bead to the nostril, like the European method of treating swine to prevent them from rooting.’[[21]]
“On the other hand, their supply of rings, pendants, and articles of different kinds worn in the ears, was practically unlimited. Shells in the shape of beads of different sizes, pendants, and small cylinders like the stem of a Holland pipe, were in use among the Indians of Canada, as were small pieces of a red stone worked into the shape of an arrow-head.[[22]] The New England and Western Indians indulged in pendants in ‘the formes of birds, beasts, and fishes, carved out of bone, shells, and stone’[[23]] and farther to the south ‘they decorate the lappets of their ears with pearls, rings, sparkling stones, feathers, flowers, corals, or silver crosses.’[[24]] In Carolina they ‘wear great Bobs in their Ears and sometimes in the Holes thereof they put Eagles and other Birds Feathers for a Trophy.’[[25]] Copper, in the shape of beads, pendants, or wire, was in use from Canada to Florida, as were tufts of down as large as the fist, oiled and painted red.[[26]] Fish-bladders, which are said to have looked like pearl, were worn in the South,[[27]] as was a pin made of the interior of a shell, called Burgo, as large as the little finger and quite as long, with a head to prevent it from slipping through the hole in which it was inserted.[[28]] Finally, according to Strachey,[[29]] and his account, we may remark, in passing, is a good summary of the whole subject, ‘their ears they bore with wyde holes, commonly two or three, and in the same they doe hang chaines of stayned pearls, braceletts of white bone or shreds of copper, beaten thinne and bright, and wound up hollowe, and with a great pride, certaine fowles leggs, eagles, hawkes, turkeys, etc., etc., with beast’s claws, beares, arrahacounes, squirrels, etc.’
“Closely connected with this style of personal ornamentation, and of interest on account of the wide field it afforded for the display of individual taste,[[30]] were the methods of dressing the hair. To specify a tithe of the fashions that prevailed in this particular among the different tribes, or among the members of the same tribe, would take more time than we can well afford.”
Professor Carr proceeds to discuss at some length the various methods of hair-dressing, of hair-ornamentation, etc. I omit much of his discourse.
He states that medicine-men in Virginia “‘shave all their heads saving their creste which they weare in manner of a cokscombe,’ and ‘fasten a small black birde above one of their eares as a badge of their office.’”[[31]]
Fig. 318. (S. about 1–4.) Types of problematical forms from H. M. Braun’s collection, East St. Louis, Illinois. Most of the specimens found near Edwardsville (as were these), not far from the famous Cahokia group of mounds, seem to be typical of that region. The specimen to the left, no. 1595, is more of the Wisconsin than of the Mississippi Valley type. The two to the right are similar to Georgia and Tennessee forms. All of these are unfinished, except perhaps the one to the right. Materials: steatite and rose quartz.
“On solemn occasions, as on gala-days, the Iroquois wore above the ear a tuft of the feathers, or the wing, or the whole skin, of some rare bird;[[32]] and the Virginia Indians tied up the lock of hair which they leave full length on the left side of the head, with an ‘arteficyall and well labored knott, stuck with many colored gew-gawes, as the cast head or brow-antle of a deare, the hand of their enemie dryed, croisettes of bright and shyning copper, like the newe moone. Many wore the whole skyne of a hauke stuffed, with the wings abroad ... and to the feathers they will fasten a little rattle, about the bignes of the chape of a rapier, which they take from the tayle of a snake, and some tymes divers kinds of shells, hanging loose by small purflects or threeds, that, being shaken as they move, they might make a certaine murmuring or whisteling noise by gathering wynd, in which they seeme to take great jollity, and hold yt a kind of bravery.’[[33]]
