Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a Native American.

1859

S.P. Avery Comical Stories 57: Look at me, old featherhead! I’m one of ’em [HDAS].

2. (also featherbrain) a scatterbrain.

1831		T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus (1858) 154: Show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher then himself is actually here.
1877		H. James American (1999) 327: Madame Urbain was not quite the featherhead she seemed.
1880		O. Wilde Vera, or the Nihilists Prologue: Many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow.
1889		‘Mark Twain’ Connecticut Yankee 16: I said as much to Clarence; but this mocking featherhead only said – ‘An Sir Kay had had time to get another skin of sour wine into him.’.
1900		Illus. London News 24 Nov. 11/1: ‘Don’t abe a silly featherhead!’.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 794: You know featherhead Culpepper, he never pays no tension to nothing.
1969		T. Murphy A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant (1978) Scene xi: You were a bright lad. Are you going the way of all feather-heads?
1983		Eble Campus Sl. Mar. 5: space cookie – person who is out of touch. Also [...] featherbrain.