Excerpt from A History of Alabama: For Use in Schools, Based as to Its Earlier Parts on the Work of Albert J. Pickett

The Indians found in Alabama by the earliest European explorers were not unlike those of later times. They were of a reddish or cinnamon brown complexion. The men were for the most part athletic and well proportioned, and many of the women were handsome. Both sexes wore mantles made of the inner bark of trees and of a species of flax, and they adorned themselves with ornaments of Shells and. Pearls, sometimes ar ranged in the form of bracelets. Many wore moccasins which were made of dressed deerskin. They usually painted their faces and bodies; some punctured themselves with needles of bone, and then rubbed in a sort of indelible ink. They dressed their heads with feathers of eagles and other birds.