The Makahs of the North-west region (U. S.) manufacture a kind of cloth out of cedar bark. “The inner bark is selected, boiled, or macerated, and then pounded and hatcheled out. The bark is made to form the warp, the woof being made of grass thread. This stuff is pliable, and makes a convenient outer garment. Very pretty capes, edged with sea-otter skin, are made of it. This tribe also are the principal manufacturers of the cedar mats which are used on the Sound. These are entirely of bark, formed into narrow strips, and woven on the floor. They are thin and perfectly even in texture.”[127] Among the tribes of the North-west: “The women universally wore a breech-clout of strands gathered around the waist and falling usually to the knees.... With the men no idea of modesty existed.”[128] They sometimes wear a bearskin with the hair out tied around the throat. “Their hats, when they wear any, are of the conical form common along the coast.”[129] A conical wicker hat similar to the Japanese shape is found among the Tlinkits (Koluschan) and Chimmesyan up on the Alaskan coast. I saw several at Sitka in the summer of 1899, but not in use. The head covering of various tribes differs considerably. The skull-cap, woven like a basket, was never found, so far as I know, in the Mississippi region. The Pai Utes formerly wore caps, or at least some of them did, the men wearing a little buckskin affair tied under the chin with strings. The remainder of their costume often consisted of a string around the waist from which was suspended front and rear a cloth of buckskin reaching half way to the ground. Others wore fine buckskin suits; a fringed shirt and fringed leggings reaching, like those of the Dakota, to the waist. The southern Utah women wore conical caps of wicker-work, like a bowl upside down, except that they had a little point at the top.[130] The women’s garment was of buckskin, attached at the neck and hanging down before and behind to below the knee, open at the sides, and bound around the waist by a buckskin sash. There was a plentiful adornment of buckskin fringe also. The feet were bare except in cold weather, when moccasins were worn. The younger women wore a narrow band around the brow composed of two buckskin strings, covered with porcupine quills, which were interwoven to hold the strings together, and the men often wore a head-dress of feathers, which stood straight up around the crown. In both men and women the hair was allowed to hang down, brushed back from the face without braids of any kind. The Navajo men wear a sort of turban; a piece of red cloth or a bandana twisted around the brow, the hair being done up in a kind of Greek knot behind. Their clothes consist of a shirt or jacket of cotton goods, and trousers of the same stuff reaching to just below the knee and slashed up on the outside for about eight inches. They sometimes wear close-fitting breeches with leggings. This garment is generally held at the waist by a belt, which is often richly decorated by discs of silver about two by four inches elaborately engraved in their native style. The trousers are sometimes bound inside the leggings. Their leggings are of buckskin, red or black, frequently fastened on the outside by a row of silver half-globe buttons of their own make and woven garters, some three feet long, twisted around above the calf. The leggings are also applied without any buttons when they are held by the garters. The moccasin is one finely made, red or black, or the natural tan colour, with a rawhide sole turned up all round, and, like the leggings, often fastened by several silver buttons. The Navajos are extremely fond of black. The hair of the women is parted and tied in a knot behind very much the same as that of the men. Their dress is now very like that of Moki women, that is, a garment that is attached over the right shoulder, under the left, and falls about half way between the knees and the ground, usually caught in at the waist by a sash or belt. Also like the Moki women they wear a kind of combined moccasin and legging, on certain occasions. This is a rawhide-soled moccasin with a long narrow top-piece which is wound round and round the leg after the moccasin is put on, and gives an almost straight line from the knee down, almost exactly the same as the Moki custom. In fact, so far as garments are concerned, it might often be difficult to tell Navajo and Moki women apart. The Moki women wear their hair differently; the married ones making two cues of it which hang down on each side of the face, usually in front of the shoulders, while the unmarried ones have theirs done up in two extraordinary wheels or discs standing parallel with the side of the face or head, and attached to it by a sort of axle wound round with string. This effect is obtained by first dividing the hair into two equal parts, drawing each part to its side of the head and winding it with string just above the ear, and a little behind it. Each division is then again divided, horizontally, into two equal parts, and these parts are carefully brushed around a curved stick, like a letter U, held with the opening sidewise, the upper one down and around and the lower one up and around, till they are completely wound over the U and spread out as much as possible at the same time. Then they are tied in the middle with a string, that is, between the arms of the U, and finally, before withdrawing the U, the two portions are fully spread, till when the U is taken out, and they are further arranged, they almost meet and form a perfect wheel or circle. In ordinary practice they do not meet, but resemble a well tied bow-knot of broad ribbon; but when a girl has a fine head of hair that has been well cared for, and her mother takes a pride in dressing her hair for any ceremony or feast day, the wheel is almost perfect. This peculiar method of hair-dressing is now found nowhere else in the world, except among the unmarried women of the Coyotero Apaches, who are said to wear a coil something like it.

Some of the Pueblo women tie their hair in a knot behind like the Navajo women; in fact, both Navajo women and men closely resemble the Pueblo in their dress, the reason in my opinion being that advanced before: namely, the incorporation of Pueblo stock. The Moki men also sometimes wear their hair like Navajos, but full-blood Navajos have taken up their residence with the Moki, so it may be confined to these and their children. The regular Moki method of dressing a man’s hair is to “bang” it across the eyebrows, cut the side locks straight back on the lower line of the ear, and gather the remainder into a knot behind.[131] The brush used is composed of a bunch of stiff grass tied round the middle with a string. Both Navajo and Moki men as well as those of other tribes now wear white men’s trousers when obtainable. The costumes worn in the various ceremonials of the Navajos, Pueblos, Iroquois, and other Amerinds are so numerous and so varied that there is no space in a chapter like this for a description of them.

In the line of embroidery comes the beadwork, see p. 125, the ornamentation with quills, and embroidery with yarns. I will only mention the embroidery of the Mokis, which is done on the ends of broad cotton sashes, with coloured yarns. This is the only form in which I have seen it. The pattern is elaborate, and often a foot or more at each end of a sash will be thus ornamented. The Pueblo women wore a roll on the head on which a water-jar was balanced. Coronado mentions this thus: “I also send two rolls, such as the women usually wear on their heads when they bring water from the spring, the same way that they do in Spain. One of these Indian women, with one of these rolls on her head, will carry a jar of water up a ladder without touching it with her hands.”[132] Some of the Pueblo women still use rings to carry water-jars on their heads. See figure on page 151.

Jaramillo speaks of the natives of the first village of “Cibola” as having clothing of “deerskins, very carefully tanned, and they also prepare some tanned cowhides, with which they cover themselves, which are like shawls and a great protection. They have square cloaks of cotton, some larger than others, about a yard and a half long. The Indians wear them thrown over the shoulder like a gypsy and fastened with one end over the other, with a girdle, also of cotton.”[133] Other Pueblos of New Mexico he describes as having “some long robes of feathers which they braid, joining the feathers with a sort of thread; and they also make them of a sort of plain weaving with which they make the cloaks with which they protect themselves.” In the Relación Postrera, the Cibola dress is described also, and I add it here because these accounts show so conclusively that the art of weaving was in full practice in this northern country before the Europeans entered it. “Some of these people wear cloaks of cotton and of the maguey (or Mexican aloe) and of tanned deerskin, and they wear shoes made of these skins, reaching up to the knees. They also make cloaks of the skins of hares and rabbits, with which they cover themselves. The women wear cloaks of the maguey, reaching down to the feet, with girdles; they wear their hair gathered about the ears like little wheels.”[134] I would specially call attention to the similarity to the costume of the present Moki, even to the hair-dressing. The Seminole men had a singular way of wearing their hair. It was cut “close to the head, except a strip about an inch wide, running over the front of the scalp from temple to temple, and another strip, of about the same width, perpendicular to the former, crossing the crown of the head to the nape of the neck. At each temple a heavy tuft was allowed to hang to the bottom of the lobe of the ear. The long hair of the strip crossing to the neck is generally gathered and braided into two ornamental queues.”[135] The mustache is worn among the Seminole, Navajo, Tlinkit, Eskimo, and other tribes. Some Eskimo shave a round place on the crown of the head. Some Amerinds also wear a small beard.

Many Amerinds, especially the men, wore, as before mentioned, nothing whatever in mild weather, and even in winter the dress of some, especially in the more southerly regions, was far from elaborate. I remember one February, in the mountains of Arizona, visiting a camp of Shevwits to have a talk with the chief. Proceeding toward his wikiup, I found him near it lying naked, basking in the sun, only partly covered by a rabbit-skin robe. He seemed to be warm and happy, the spot being a sheltered one in a canyon, and the rays of the sun being comfortably warm. In a Journal of a Voyage to New York in 1679–80, the authors, speaking of the natives near Sandy Hook, said: “They wear something in front, over the thighs, and a piece of duffels, like a blanket, around the body, and this is all the clothing they have. Their hair hangs down from their head in strings, well smeared with fat, and sometimes with quantities of little beads twisted in it out of pride.”[136]

In war the body was generally naked in many tribes.[137] The Navajo warrior wore absolutely nothing but the breech-cloth, and I am not sure that he wore even that. In some tribes the warriors wore a head-dress, either a kind of turban or a feather head-dress. The Dakotas wore their long trailing war-bonnets of feathers, or not possessing one, certain feathers in their hair, according to their standing as warriors; and sometimes their leggings. Of course each carried bow, quiver, shield, and such weapons of his tribe as were in vogue. On the North-west coast a protective armour was employed, and such a practice obtained in other regions, notably among the Aztecs and other Mexicans, who made a thick quilted cotton armour, as was noted in the quotations from Prescott. The subject of armour, however, belongs to another chapter. The wearing of rings in the nose and ears, and the perforation of the ears, while a part of costume, more properly belongs to customs. In the “ghost” excitement of a few years ago, special shirts were donned, and in the battles resulting from this craze, these shirts were worn because they were thought to be proof against bullets and all other weapons. “During the dance,” says Mooney, “it was worn as an outside garment, but was said to be worn at other times under the ordinary dress. Although the shape, fringing, and feather adornment were practically the same in every case, considerable variation existed in regard to the painting, the designs on some being very simple, while the others were fairly covered with representations of sun, moon, and stars, the sacred things of their mythology, and the visions of the trance. The feathers attached to the garment were always those of the eagle, and the thread used in the sewing was always the old-time sinew.”[138] The approved material of the “ghost-shirt” was buckskin, but where this could not be had the shirt was made of cotton cloth.

In the Far North, clothing is imperative all the year round, and about every minute of the time, out-of-doors. Yet the garments of the Eskimo often do not quite meet around the waist, so that in bending over the bare back is exposed to the cold. In their houses, too, they often wear very little; nothing more than a kind of deerskin drawers. The material of their clothing is entirely fur-skins; though the Hudson Bay Eskimo sometimes wear trousers of jean, or denim, obtained in trade. Up to a certain age the children of both sexes are dressed much alike, and the smaller ones scrabbling about the bottom of a umiak, or skin boat, can hardly be distinguished at first glance from some kind of a bear cub. At Plover Bay, Siberia, where the natives resemble the Eskimo, I saw one small child in arms, that seemed to be completely sewed up in skins with the hair side in, its arms and legs looking like the stumps left after a surgical operation. Of the skin of the child nothing was to be seen except its face, its head, too, being entirely enveloped. This was in the middle of July, when the far-away Moki children would be scurrying about without a thread to disguise them. The children of the Eskimo proper, on our side of Bering Strait, were clothed, as mentioned, in skins with the fur side out. Reindeer, otter, fox, and seal seem to furnish the bulk of their furs, but a number of other skins and furs are used when they can get them. Murdoch, Boas, and Turner have given such careful detailed accounts of the Eskimo in the various regions they visited,[139] that I refer the reader to them for full information, presenting here only sufficient to convey a general idea of the clothing. “The chief material (at Point Barrow) is the skin of the reindeer (caribou),” says Murdoch, “which is used in various stages of pelage. Fine, short-haired summer skins, especially those of does and fawns, are used for making dress garments and underclothes. The heavier skins are used for every-day working clothes, while the heaviest winter skins furnish extra warm jackets for cold weather, warm winter stockings and mittens.... The man’s dress consists of the usual loose hooded frock, without opening except at the neck and wrists. This reaches just over the hips, rarely about to mid-thigh, where it is cut off square, and is usually confined by a girdle at the waist. Under this garment is worn a similar one, usually of lighter skin and sometimes without a hood. The thighs are clad in one or two pairs of tight-fitting knee-breeches, confined round the hips by a girdle and usually secured by a drawstring below the knee, which ties over the tops of the boots. On the legs and feet are worn, first, a pair of long, deerskin stockings with the hair inside; then slippers of tanned sealskin, in the bottom of which is spread a layer of whalebone shavings, and outside a pair of close-fitting boots, held in place round the ankle, usually reaching above the knee, and ending by a string with a rough edge, which is covered by the breeches.... The boots are of reindeer skin, with white sealskin soles for winter and dry weather, but in summer waterproof boots of black sealskin with soles of white whaleskin, etc., are worn.”[140]

The woman’s frock is much like the man’s, in the Point Barrow region, only it has tails, or aprons, front and rear, rounded at the bottom. In the Hudson Bay region, this garment is shaped more at the waist, and the tails are lance-shaped and narrower, while the front one is much shorter than the back. At Point Barrow there is also worn by the men a cloak or mantle of deerskin, in extremely cold weather. These cloaks are put on over the head, and fall down all round, being fastened at the throat by strings. They are not of one piece. The men’s leg coverings come only to the knee, but the women’s are long enough to reach from the feet to the waist, and the moccasin is attached to the bottom. The edge of the moccasin sole is crimped to make it smaller at the top, and this is the case with the soles of the boots made. This crimping is done by the teeth. The wet-weather boots are waterproof and light, but there is a disagreeable odour about them. This odour is more pronounced in some of the hastily made stockings which are worn inside the boots. I bought a pair of the common sealskin stockings made with hair side in at Port Clarence, but their smell was something unbearable. For a waterproof garment they take the entrails of the seal and, splitting them longitudinally, sew together the strips thus obtained in the desired shape. Coats made in this way are durable and light, and answer the purpose admirably. Dr. Kane mentions a dress he saw where a man wore “booted trousers of white bearskin, which at the end of the foot were made to terminate with the claws of the animal.”[141]

In the middle and upper Mississippi region, according to Hunter, there were tribes who made blankets of the wool of the buffalo, notably the Osages, who were of Siouan stock. Their method of procedure seems to have been very like that of the Navajos and Mokis, to whom they are not related, except that they belong to the Amerind race. Hunter says: “The hair of the buffalo and other animals is sometimes manufactured into blankets; the hair is first twisted by hand and wound into balls. The warp is then laid of a length to answer the size of the intended blanket, crossed by three small smooth rods alternately beneath the threads, and secured at each end to stronger rods supported on forks, at a short distance above the ground. Thus prepared the woof is filled in, thread by thread, and pressed closely together, by means of a long flattened wooden needle. When the weaving is finished, the ends of the warp and woof are tied into knots, and the blanket is ready for use.”[142]