TABLE 3.-Geographical and tribal distribution of the animal foods of the South eastern Indians according to references in the literature

1 The true plaice is confined to Europe; the identity of this fish is unknown.

X

• Quail.

DISCUSSION

We are plainly dealing with one economic province. Several species of corn, beans, peas, and squashes or pumpkins, including gourds from the genus Cucurbita, were cultivated in all parts of it except in southern Florida which, as already remarked, should really have belonged to the West Indian province but was left a kind of economic no man's land by failure to introduce manioc. The result was that it had no cultivated plants at all in purely aboriginal times. The province most closely resembling it was the Chitimacha country, and it is perhaps significant that we do not seem to have a clear record of the use there, in prehistoric times, of beans, peas, and squashes, but this may be owing in part to the early displacement of these plants by rice, melons, and other food plants better suited to the country. More light upon the ancient condition of this region is urgently needed.

There were three principal varieties of corn: the little corn of the nature of popcorn, which was first to mature; the flint or hominy corn, the kernels of which were hard and smooth and were of various colors-white, yellow, red, and blue; and the flour or dent corn with corrugated kernels. Bread was made oftenest of the flour corn; it was the most valued and it seems to have been the time of its maturity which determined the occurrence of the green corn dance. I have seen some flint corn raised among the Choctaw which was mottled white and blue, and a number of years ago I remember some large ears of flour corn brought back by Mr. Mooney from the Cherokee. These were white mottled with a deep pink.

Sunflowers seem to have been cultivated generally. In the northeastern Algonquian section a kind of "orache" is said to have been raised as a salt substitute.

The wild vegetable products were also much the same. Groundnuts (Apios tuberosa), wild sweetpotatoes, several varieties of Smilax (kantak), Angelico roots, persimmons, plums, grapes, strawberries, mulberries, blackberries, some varieties of huckleberries, wild rice, the seed of a species of cane, chestnuts, walnuts, hickory nuts, acorns, particularly those of the live oak, and chinquapins must have been used in nearly all sections, though it is strange that blackberries are so seldom mentioned by name. The Virginia wakerobin (Peltandra virginica), floating arum, or whatever other plant was used for tuckahoe bread, seems to have been confined to the Northeast. The prickley pear, crab apple, wild pea, tree huckleberry, gooseberry, cherry, and serviceberry are mentioned only in the Algonquian or eastern Siouan sections. The blue palmetto is referred to in southern sections, as might have been expected; a pond lily, Nelumbo lutea,

in the Southwest in the present States of Mississippi and Louisiana; and Sagittaria in several places. The Zamia integrifolia, palm berries, coco berries, and seagrapes belonged to the south Florida province, the one which lacked cultivated plants.

Raspberries were utilized in the northern highlands, but there are notes of them in Florida and Louisiana which have reference either to the blackcaps or to blackberries. The sugar maple was also exploited in highland portions of the area.

A mushroom was used by the Natchez and honey locusts by the Creeks and Cherokee,

Plants and trees introduced at a comparatively early date include the passiflora, watermelon, muskmelon, peach, peanut, canna, sorghum, the cultivated sweetpotato, rice, okra, apple, fig, and orange.

Staple animal foods in every section were provided by the deer and bear, the former being valued mainly for its flesh, the latter for its fat. In the northern and western parts these were supplemented by the bison and elk, and the former was probably a much more important game animal in prehistoric times than it became later. Most important of the small animals were the rabbit and the squirrel, the former mentioned oftenest in the northeastern section and the latter among the Choctaw. In De Soto's time rabbits were eaten everywhere. Presents of rabbits were made to the Spaniards at Ocute on the east side of Ocmulgee River, and by the Chickasaw, and the explorers learned to trap them in the aboriginal manner west of the Mississippi (Bourne, 1904, vol. 1, pp. 56, 101, 145; vol. 2, p. 22). The beaver and otter were eaten in Virginia and probably in the coast region of North Carolina. The former was also hunted by the Siouan tribes of both Carolinas, but neither appears as a food animal elsewhere, and Adair (1775, p. 132) says that the beaver was anciently tabooed by the Chickasaw. Lawson states that the Indians of his acquaintance, meaning the Siouan people of the Carolinas and probably the Tuscarora, ate panthers, polecats, wildcats, opossums, and raccoons, while Lederer tells us that the former consumed wildcats although their flesh was rank. (Lawson, 1860, p. 290; Alvord, 1912, p. 147.) "Leopards," presumably panthers, were presented to Laudonnière, by Florida Indians (1586, p. 130), but it does not appear certain that they regarded them as food, and there are no other references to suggest the eating of them in this section. Adair (1775, pp. 16, 132) says that their flesh and the flesh of the opossum were equally taboo among the Chickasaw. One of the smaller animals, such as the otter or muskrat, may have been intended by the "rats" which were consumed by the inhabitants of south Florida (Swanton, 1922, p. 388). They also hunted the manatee, and their successors, the Seminole, who called it the "big beaver" (Bartram, 1792), did the same. According

to Hariot, porpoises were hunted by the coast people of North Carolina, and Fontaneda mentions "whale" hunting by the south Floridians, but he probably has reference to the porpoise or perhaps the manatee, since Lawson tells a fantastic story of whale hunting which seems to be explained by south Florida usages in the chase of the manatee (but see pp. 282, 329).

Fishing was an important industry almost everywhere, but particularly on the Atlantic coast to the northeast, in Florida, and on the Mississippi and its tributaries, including the lagoon and bayou sections of Louisiana. The fish most prominent in the Northeast were the herring and sturgeon, but Lawson tells us that the coast tribes did not use the latter (see p. 277). Besides these, Hariot mentions the trout, ray, alewife, mullet, and plaice; Lawson speaks of all but the last two of these and adds the garfish, bluefish, rockfish or bass, and trout; and Florida authorities speak of the trout, turbot, mullet, and plaice (see pp. 273, 279, 280). In south Florida the trout, wolf fish, trunk fish (chapin), and tunny are mentioned (see p. 282). The carp, sucker, catfish, and sardine (herring?) are the only fish specifically named among the Natchez and other Mississippi River tribes (Swanton, 1911, p. 72). According to Bartram (1792, p. 174) the great spotted gar was sometimes eaten. Eels appear only on the menu of the southern Floridians along with oysters and clams (Swanton, 1922, pp. 388, 392). Clams, oysters, and mussels were used by practically all peoples of the Atlantic coast. Crabs, cockles, crawfish, and lobsters are mentioned by authorities on the northeastern and Floridian Indians. Land and oceanic turtles and their eggs were used as food in nearly all sections where they occurred; snakes in the Northeast, in Florida, and even by the Choctaw, though this last is on the authority of Adair, who was no friend of the Choctaw people (Adair, 1775, p. 133). However, Timberlake, while in the Cherokee country and very likely at the suggestion of Cherokee Indians, tasted rattlesnake flesh and found it so excellent that he repeated the experiment several times (Timberlake, Williams ed., 1927, p. 72). Lizards are said to have been used in both northern and southern Florida as was the alligator, which was also eaten by the coast tribes of Louisiana and probably others.

The most important game bird was the wild turkey, hunted whereever it could be found. Second in importance was the passenger pigeon, whose roosts were gathering places for Indian hunters at certain seasons. Names scattered throughout the Gulf States bear record to the places where enormous flocks of these birds used to gather. There is a Pigeon Roost Creek in northern Mississippi, a Pigeon Roost in Clay County, Ky., and the following local names have forms of the same name in the Creek language: Parchelagee

Creek in Taylor County, Ga., Patsaliga in Crenshaw County, Ala., and a creek of the same name, besides another known as Pigeon Creek, in the same part of the State. Very likely Pigeon Creek, Nassau County, Fla., and Little Pigeon Creek, Sevier County, Tenn., were pigeon resorts. Partridges were mentioned as in use in Virginia, and ducks and geese in South Carolina and the Chickasaw country, but they were undoubtedly eaten wherever they could be found. Birds' eggs were probably eaten everywhere and are specifically mentioned as an article of consumption among the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Powhatan Indians. The remaining delicacies belonging to the animal kingdom of which we have notice are beetles and locusts in Virginia, wasps in the comb in the Piedmont Region of the Carolinas, fleas and lice in north Florida (Swanton, 1922, p. 362), and snails in south Florida.

A word might be added regarding the use of dog flesh. Ranjel, one of the De Soto chroniclers, tells us that the Indians of a town somewhere in the northwestern part of the present South Carolina gave the Spaniards "a few little dogs which are good eating," and adds: "These are dogs of a small size that do not bark; and they breed them in their homes for food" (Bourne, 1904, vol. 2, p. 103). It has been conjectured that these were opossums, but as Elvas speaks of a presentation of dogs in about the same region, but says that the Indians did not eat them, the chances are that either Ranjel or his editor has made a mistake, that the animals were dogs, and that they were not eaten by the natives. As to the absence of a bark, we may well recall what Strachey (1849, p. 124), says of the dogs of Virginia that they "cannot barke, but howle." A small variety of dog was, however, used as food in some other parts of North America. Du Pratz includes the dog among Natchez food animals, but it is probable that he has in mind the part that it played in the feasts of which war parties partook just before starting out to engage the enemy (Swanton, 1911, p. 129). The Quapaw had the same custom, according to Romans (1775, p. 100), who speaks of it as if it did not extend farther south, but while he is, of course, in error here, we may take his remarks as an indication that the usage, like so many others, had spread south along the river and was not originally characteristic of the Gulf tribes.

An apparent exception is indicated by an anonymous French writer, who says that when the Choctaw "wish to feast their friends, they kill a dog, of which they have quantities, and serve it to them" (Swanton, 1918, p. 67). But since this statement stands entirely by itself, such feasts may have had a ceremonial significance.

Adair (1775, pp. 133-134) states that, in early times, the Indians of his acquaintance did not eat the flesh of horses, dogs, or domestic cats, though when he wrote the Choctaw had become addicted to the use of the first-mentioned.