Traditional Choctaw Men's Wear
Picture Here in Choctaw Regalia Aaron Wilkins
CLOTHES
The Choctaw clothes in early days in Mississippi were whatever was available within their region. the early clothes consisted of a blouse and short skirt made of animal hide for the woman. Deer brains were used in tanning the hides. The men wore breechcloth and moccasin. When traveling, they wore pants and shirt. In the winter, they wore other garments of animal hide and furs with the lower ends of leggings tucked into the moccasin. They wore moccasins when traveling, but often went barefoot at home. Later, the women invariably wore a blouse and skirt made of cotton material. In the winter, the body was protected by a shawl. They wore moccasins similar to those worn by man and went barefoot at home. For ornament, they wore wooden beads. Both men and women wore their hair long and plaited or flowing loosely. The clothes worn after the arrival to their new homeland were similar to those worn by the white settlers. The dress style changed among the women of the white settlers, but the Choctaw women continue to war the loosely fitted dress with the hemline just above the ankle. She wore an apron and kerchief on her head and went barefoot at home. During the 1930's the women began to adopt the dress style of that era and ready-made dresses were available for purchase. Today the Choctaw women have accepted and keep abreast of current fashion and no longer are they "set apart by the clothes they wear".
CEREMONIAL SHIRT
The man's shirt is made from cotton material and the decoration is similar to those sewn on the woman's dress. The colorful shirt is worn with a ribboned felt hat. Ornaments worn with the shirt include beaded belt with multicolors of ribbon worn from the waist on one side only, a beaded tie and sash featuring design native to the Choctaws. Moccasins completes the ensemble look for the man.
Excerpt from: "Choctaw Music and Dance"
By James H. Howard and Victoria Lindsay Levine
Copyright 1990
When participating in public performances of Choctaw dances, today's Choctaws wear their national regalia. This regalia, for both sexes, is quite distinctive and readily distinguishes the wearer as a Choctaw rather than a member of some other southeastern tribe. There are only slight differences between the Mississippi and Oklahoma Choctaws in terms of dress. Most of the items making up both the man's and the woman's costume are derived form the clothing styles of southern whites in the nineteenth centaury. Certain of the component parts, however, are made and decorated in a distinctive Choctaw manner, and both the male and female ensembles are now so well integrated into Choctaw culture that they constitute a tribal badge.
MEN
The costume of the men and boys, from head to toe, consists of the following eight items:
1. A low-crowned black felt hat (shapo) is usually decorated with a band of two commercial rayon ribbons. Often there is a tiny ribbon bow at the front of the band and the ends of the ribbons are allowed to hang loose over the brim of the hat for several inches in the back. The name of the hat in Choctaw, shapo, derives from the French chapeau and indicated the European group from which the Choctaws secured their headgear. According to Claud Medford, Jr., the older Cajun men of Louisiana often wear a hat identical to that used by the Choctaws. Medford reports that until recently both Choctaws and French-speaking Louisianans ordered these hats from suppliers in France.
Sometimes Older Choctaw men wear an eagle feather at one side of the hat or even one on each side. I have also seen men wearing a colored turkey or goose feather that has had most of the rachis shaved away so that the web vibrates rapidly in the slightest breeze. This is an old southeastern Indian trait, and I have observed feathers treated in this manner among the Creeks, Seminoles, and Yuchis in Oklahoma as well. Formerly some men wore silver headbands or crowns as hatbands. These were the same pierced silver headbands formerly worn in connection wit the cloth turban, which was the male head covering antedating the felt hat.
2. The traditional Choctaw shirt (ilefoka lomba) is collarless and buttons at the back of the neck. These shirts are invariably in a solid color of cotton, usually red, blue, yellow, white, or pink, with a decoration of finely cut and stitched appliqué work employed in Choctaw appliqué work names and a symbolic meaning. They will be discussed later on this page.
3. Around the neck some men wear a bright silk scarf (natpaski), an openwork necklace (shikalla nondzhi), or simply several strands of large beads strung in loops. I have also seen Plains-style beaded bolo ties and choker necklaces or simply a commercially made silk cravat.
4. An optional item worn over the shirt is the beaded cloth shoulder belt or baldric (skikalla eskofatshi). It is of a color that contrasts with the color of the shirt and is beautifully beaded in traditional Choctaw Motifs. Today only a few of the men and boys, usually older men, wear these baldrics, but old photographs and costume dolls indicate that their use was once more general. One old photograph in 1907 even shows a young girl wearing a pair of baldrics, but this certainly was never common practice. Usually baldrics are made and worn in matching sets, but that is not invariably the case. Baldrics were once worn by Creeks, Seminoles, Yuchis, Cherokees, and even Shawnees, but they are now seen only among the Choctaws. I was told that at one time each Choctaw community had its characteristic designs.
5. Another optional item is the beaded belt (eskofatshi). It may be decorated in the same designs and beadwork techniques as the baldric (item 4 above), but I have also seen recent examples done in loom work using Plano Indian geometric designs. Beaded belts are purely ornamental and are worn over the ordinary leather belt used to hold up the trousers.
6. Fastened to the belt on one side, either right or left, is a bunch of long ribbons of various colors (sita lapushki), which may hang nearly to the ground. These ribbons may be a survival of the ends of the finger-woven yarn sash formerly worn by Choctaw men. Trailing behind the moving dancers, the ribbons provide an interesting accent to their movements.
7. Trousers or slacks (ohala foka) in Mississippi are usually black. The male dancers in Eugene Wilson's Oklahoma troupe, however, were completely outfitted in white slacks when I saw them perform in 1974. Male dancers in Buster Ned's Sixtown troupe often have a stripe of appliqué on the outer side of each trouser leg and three of the younger men in his group have shirts and trousers of the same matching color and appliqué design.
8. Ordinary commercially made shoes or moccasins (shulush, from the English word shoes) complete the present-day male dancer's regalia. Historic Choctaw dolls indicate that until 1860 or 1870 Choctaw men and women wore soft-soled moccasins of native manufacture. These were of the classical southeastern type, puckered to a single seam at the top of the foot and with large ankle flaps.
Bells (tale saolowa), as noted earlier, are still worn by some of the male dancers in Buster Ned's troupe and were formerly worn by male dancers in Mississippi and Louisiana. The hunting coat (na foka patafa, lit. "split garment") is an obsolete item of male costume. It appears in photographs of Choctaw men taken in 1907 and 1909 and in the Catlin paintings. The coat was worn over the shirt and was decorated with appliqué designs at the cuff, front opening, and hem. Such hunting coats were widespread in the Southeast in the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth. They survived until the late 1960's among the Creeks, Seminole and Yuchis in Oklahoma but apparently went out of use somewhat earlier among the Choctaws.
Silver armbands (shakba elhfoa), silver gorgets, and face paint (nashuka humachi) are also items of male adornment no longer seen but still remembered.
THE MEANING OF DIFFERENT SYMBOLS
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of present-day Choctaw costuming, both male and female, is the cutout appliqué' work noted above in connection with the men's shirts and the women's dresses and aprons. There seems to be a limited number of designs employed in this type of ornamentation. Buster Ned supplied the following interpretation of some of these appliqué' designs.
1. The diamond design, is derived from the markings of a diamondback rattlesnake. (note added) "Because of the medicine derived from them".
2. The Saint Andrew's cross design, X, according to Buster Ned, derives from the Choctaw stickball game (kebutsha): "In years past [the player] when the game was over... Would hang the sticks on the walls of the house, and put [them] in the shape of an X. the design means "May our paths cross again and again." The Saint Andrew's cross design is also commonly seen in beadwork.
3. The half-diamond design, according to Buster Ned, "is derived from, [the] life of the people. The Choctaw people believed in the Great Spirit (God) in that their life followed an imaginary road. [The design symbolizes] that when they give aid to someone sick, they come off this imaginary road, and when the sick was well, he returned to this road and continued,. [Likewise] when he did something bad, he again left the road, only he was on the opposite side, thus the half diamond design."
Or
4. The road design, according to Buster Ned, represents the "road of life" which one travels in his or her span on earth, as mentioned in connection with the half diamond design above.
5. The circle design, O, represents the Choctaw tribe. Buster Ned comments: "The Choctaws believed, and still do, that we live in a circle (imaginary) and that, in this circle, a man or woman cannot talk about (gossip) or tell bad tales on another Choctaw. If this happens then this is...Passed on until [within] a short period of time the person who did the talking finds himself or herself being shunned by his fellow tribesman and he then "out of the circle" and he'll be wondering why."
6. The ball design, filled in circle, represents the ball used in the Choctaw stickball game. According to Buster this design was worn only on the garments of the male stickball players. This design is apparently obsolete, as I have never seen it in use in either Mississippi or Oklahoma. It is nevertheless clearly identifiable as a representation of the Choctaws in neatly covered with interwoven rawhide or a leather strip, which explains the interior line work in this design.
7. The reversal spiral or "coiled snake" design. This design represents the giant horned serpent of southeastern mythology coiling and uncoiling. It is definitely prehistoric in origin, as it appears as a pottery design on vessels from the Mississippian archaeological culture. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was in wide spared use as a beadwork design on baldrics. I have observed it on baldrics collected form the Cherokees, Creeks, Alabamans, and Coushatta's as well as from the Choctaws. at present it continues in use only among the Choctaws. In 1965 I collected a baldric from Wilson Morris, of the Bogue Chitto Community in Mississippi, which employs the reversed spiral motif together with design 2, the Saint Andrew's cross. The reversed spiral design is sometimes split into two parts or otherwise modified.
8. Another common beadwork design is the "friendship" design, identified by Wilson Morris.
9. The sunburst and sunburst enclosing a star are also common beadwork designs, but I did not secure any interpretations of their symbolism.