Native Life: Turbans

Today, turbans are more associated with Middle Eastern cultures while Natives are routinely pictured with feathered headdresses or decorations in their hair.  While feathers played an important role in most Native adornment, so did the turban for many Woodlands tribes.

The story goes that, during the eighteenth century, a Cherokee delegation visited London and, as per usual, had their portraits made by a European artist.  He thought that the traditional shaved heads of Cherokee warriors wouldn't be as pleasing to the eye of a European audience, rummaged his shop and came up with some turbans that had been left behind by a Turkish patron and voila, a trend was born.  While turbans didn't constitute part of Native headgear prior to contact with Europeans, their introduction to Native life is most likely due to the fact that turbans are easily made from any handy strip of cloth.  All you need is a little ingenuity, which is probably why many cultures around the world adopted them.

An important item of trade among Natives was cloth, most often calico.  Made from cotton and block-printed with a variety of designs, calico cloth was attractive, cheap and durable.  The first turbans were likely cloth worn bandanna-style, tied around the head.  As time wore on, members of Northeastern and Southeastern tribes put their own variations on the theme.  Cherokee men quickly adopted White dress, but differentiated themselves by calico turbans wrapped around the head, as Sequoyah is often pictured.  Men of the Muscogean tribes, such as the Choctaw Pushmataha, used cloth that had already been made into shawls, leaving the fringed ends hanging down on either side.  He and other leaders and prominent warriors decorated their turbans with silver bands, or feathered plumes, as the Seneca Guyasuta is pictured wearing in the miniature.

However, it was among the Seminole that turbans reached a superb art form.  Seminole men would take several pieces of cloth and wind them tightly about the head, securing the fabric with decorated silver bands.  The outfit would be complete with large crane plumes of various colors.  Osceola's configuration of two black and one white plume was a well-known "trademark" that appears in all images of him.  He sometimes bestowed white plumes from his turbans as gifts or peace offerings.  After his death, White officers at Fort Moultrie divided his white and black plumes and cloth he used for his turbans among themselves as souvenirs. 


 Here's a clip from a modern Cherokee turban maker on how to tie a turban.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-FfCk6Qb90