I recently read an article about a Native American boy who was sent home from school for wearing a mohawk. Whether or not that was a wise move for school administrators, there appears to be an insinuation that Native American tribes, specifically the Seneca, wore mohawk hairstyles.
This article got me thinking: did Native American tribes (or a specific tribe) actually wear a hairstyle similar to the modern mohawk (in the 18th-19th centuries or before)? My understanding is they wore something similar, but it really was a patch on the crown of the head, and not a full strip down the top fo the head as we commonly think of it in modern times.
Thank you for any insight on this!
Yeah, they did - so far as I know, the haircut I think we're both thinking of was a solely male and largely an east of the Mississippi style.
Because it's my academic bent, I'm going to be coming at this from a largely art historical/anthropological perspective. You can see Northeastern Native men with that hairstyle c. the 18th century depicted in paintings like Benjamin West's [Death of General Wolfe] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_General_Wolfe). A lot of George Catlin's portraits of Native leaders from the Prairie nations like the [Ioway] (http://ioway.nativeweb.org/history/seenontya.htm) depict a similar style of haircut, though it may be a little hard to see because the hair tends to be [roached] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roach_%28headdress%29).
Men in the Southeast also wore the hairstyle, though that may be hard to tell because they also frequently wore [turbans] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seminole#/media/File:Coeehajo.jpg). If you take a look at Clay McCauley's book about the Florida Seminole, he records Seminole men [wearing the style] (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19155/19155-h/19155-h.htm#fig64). I furthermore suppose the hairstyle might have ancient precedent that (maybe?) we're seeing depicted in [Late Mississippian gorgets] (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hightower_style_Birdman_gorget_Etowah_HRoe_2012.jpg), but - it's kind of hard to be definitive about that, imo.
Looks like [Pawnee folks had the style, too] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bird_King#/media/File:Charles_Bird_King_-_Young_Omahaw,_War_Eagle,_Little_Missouri,and_Pawnees-_Google_Art_Project.jpg). [Here] (http://www.santacruzmah.org/2005/picturing-the-west-tom-trujillo-and-artists-of-the-american-west/picturing_the_west_2/) is a kind of spin-off of the style among the Meskwaki.
