siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL, AND CEKEMONIAL LIFE 119
faces broad : for, when the smooth channel of nature is stopped in one place,
if a destruction of the whole system does not thereby ensue, it breaks out in a
proportional redundancy in another."
He is somewhat too comprehensive in mapping the distribution
of the custom. The only other good description is Bartram's, which
runs thus
The Choctaws are called by the traders flats, or flat-heads, all the males
having the fore and hind part of their skulls artificially flattened, or com-
is effected after the following manner. As soon as the child
pressed ; which
is born, the nurse provides a cradle or wooden case, hollowed and fashioned,
to receive the infant, lying prostrate on its back, that part of the case where
the head reposes, being fashioned like a brick mould. In this portable machine
the little boy is fixed, a bag of sand being laid on his forehead, which
by continual gentle compression, gives the head somewhat the form of a
brick from the temples upwards ; and by these means they have high and lofty
foreheads, sloping off backwards."
PERSONAL NAMES
None of our authorities treats this subject adequately; we merely
know that, as in the case of the Creeks and ChickasaAT, there were
two kinds of names, those bestowed in infancy and the war titles
given in later life in commemoration of military exploits or events.
Cushman suggests a totemistic significance in the names of the
first class
The names of the ancient Choctaws, as well as their entire race, as far as
I have been enabled to learn, were nearly always connative referring gen-
erally to some animal, and often predicating some attribute of that animal.
Such names were easily expressed in sign language ; as the objectiveness of
the Indian proper names with the result, is that they could all be signified by
gesture, whereas the best sign talker among deaf mutes, it is said, is unable
to translate the proper names in his speech, [and] therefore resorts to the
dactylic alphabet.^'
Claiborne's remark that children were " never named after their
parents, but take their names from some incident at the moment of
their birth," " seems, however, more in harmony with what we know
of the neighboring peoples.
From the French manuscript so often quoted we learn that there
were gradations among the warriors and it is probable that, as
with the Creeks, the war titles were connected with the grades.
Such a gradation seems to be indicated by Byington when he
says in his dictionary, under the heading '' humma," that it is " an
addition to a man's name which gives him some distinction, calling
on him for courage and honor. The ' na hutmna ' may not run or
"Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., pp. 8-9. « Cushman, Hist. Inds., p. 98.