Subject: tastenagi warrior chief

Culture: Seminole

Setting: American-Seminole wars, Florida 1816-1858

Object: headdress

* Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology > Change and Continuity - Hall of the North American Indian

"Turban (Seminole)

Southeastern Indian men seldom wore anything on their heads. Individuals of high rank, however, wore elaborate head gear on ceremonial occasions. In late prehistoric times such men wore bird or animal skins wrapped around their heads. This may have been the forerunner of the cloth-wrapped turbans which appear in pictures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but the connection is not definite. A Seminole turban was made by folding and wrapping a commercial woolen shawl. Silver bands and feathers were added embellishments. This turban is made of cotton and exhibits an egret plume. It is probably a model, since its form was obsolete when it was collected in 1936. Thomas Barbour acquired it at this time from Deaconess Bedell. ..."