eads of our school children.

Ornamentation Of Clothing.

The clothing of both men and women is ordinarily more or less
ornamented. Braids and strips of cloth of various colors are used and
wrought upon the garments into odd and sometimes quite tasteful shapes.
The upper parts of the shirts of the women are usually embroidered with
yellow, red, and brown braids. Sometimes as many as five of these braids
lie side by side, parallel with the upper edge of the garment or
dropping into a sharp angle between the shoulders. Occasionally a very
narrow cape, attached, I think, to the shirt, and much ornamented with
braids or stripes, hangs just over the shoulders and back. The same
kinds of material used for ornamenting the shirt are also used in
decorating the skirt above the lower edge of the petticoat. The women
embroider along this edge, with their braids and the narrow colored
stripes, a border of diamond and square shaped figures, which is often
an elaborate decoration to the dress. In like manner many of the shirts
of the men are made pleasing to the eye. I saw no ornamentation in
curves: it was always in straight lines and angles.

Use Of Beads.

My attention was called to the remarkable use of beads among these
Indian women, young and old. It seems to be the ambition of the Seminole
squaws to gather about their necks as many strings of beads as can be
hung there and as they can carry. They are particular as to the quality
of the beads they wear. They are satisfied with nothing meaner than a
cut glass bead, about a quarter of an inch or more in length, generally
of some shade of blue, and costing (so I was told by a trader at Miami)
$1.75 a pound. Sometimes, but not often, one sees beads of an inferior
quality worn.

These beads must be burdensome to their wearers. In the Big Cypress
Swamp settlement one day, to gratify my curiosity as to how many strings
of beads these women can wear, I tried to count those worn by "Young
Tiger Tail's" wife, number one, Mo-ki, who had come through the
Everglades to visit her relatives. She was the proud wearer of certainly
not fewer than two hundred strings of good sized beads. She had six
quarts (probably a peck of the beads) gathered about her neck, hanging
down her back, down upon her breasts, filling the space under her chin,
and covering her neck up to her ears. It was an effort for her to move
her head. She, however, was only a little, if any, better off in her
possessions t