growth of their crops. Besides, they are so desirous of having multum in parvo, without much sweating, that they plant the corn-hills so close, as to thereby choak up the field.-They plant their corn in straight rows, putting five or six grains into one hole, about two inches distance-They cover them with clay in the form of a small hill. Each row is a yard asunder, and in the vacant ground they plant pumpkins, water-melons, marsh-mallows, sun-flowers, and sundry sorts of beans and peas, the last two of which yield a large increase. (Adair, 1775, pp. 406-408.)

Du Pratz tells us that the Natchez prepared their fields for planting by means of a curved mattock made of hickory, but shoulder blades of the bison were observed among the neighboring Bayogoula employed for the same purpose, and no doubt the Natchez used them also. These mattocks were used

to weed the maize and cut down the canes in the preparation of a field. When the canes were dry they set fire to them, and to sow the maize, they made a hole with the hand in which they put some grains. These [hickory] mattocks were made like a capital L. They cut by means of the sides of the lower end, which is very flat. (La Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, pp. 26, 176; Swanton, 1911, p. 75.) Some time in 1699, the French chronicler, Pénicaut, visited the town of the Pascagoula Indians on the river which still bears their name and makes the following observations regarding their farming:

The next morning we went to walk in their fields where they sow their corn. The women were there working with their men. The savages have flat, bent sticks, which they use to hoe the ground, for they do not know how to work it as it is done in France. They scratch the soil with these crooked sticks and uproot with them the canes and weeds which they leave on the earth in the sun during fifteen days or a month. Then they set fire to them, and when they are reduced to ashes they have a stick as large as the arm, pointed at one end, with which they make holes in the earth 3 feet apart; they put into each hole seven or eight grains of corn and cover them with earth. It is thus that they sow their corn and their beans. When the corn is a foot high they take great care, as in France, to get rid of the weeds which get into it, and repeat it two or three times a year. They make use even now of their wooden hoes, because they find them lighter, although we have given them hoes of iron. (Pénicaut, in Margry, 1883, vol. 5, p. 304.)

Farming among the Caddo has been described in Bulletin 132 of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Swanton, 1942, pp. 127-131).

HUNTING

WOODCRAFT

Indian woodcraft has always been proverbial, and, indeed, something of mystery has often been attached to it not warranted by the facts, the skill of the Indians in this particular being a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the necessities of their economic life. Catesby has the following to say about this:

When a body of Indians set out on an hunting journey of five hundred miles, more or less, perhaps where none of them ever were; after the imaginary place

of rendezvous is agreed on, they then consult what direction it lies in, every one pointing his finger towards the place; though but little variation appears in their pointings, the preference of judgment is given to the eldest; thus it being concluded on, they set out all singly, and different ways, except the women, who jog on a constant pace, while the men traverse a vast tract of land in hunting on each side, and meet together in small parties at night. Thus they proceed onward their journey, and though they range some hundred miles from one another, they all meet at the place appointed. And if an obstruction happens, they leave certain marks in the way, where they that come after will understand how many have passed and which way they are gone. They are never lost, though at the greatest distance from home; and where they never were before, they will find their way back by a contrary way from that they went.

An Indian boy that was brought up very young to school at Williamsburgh, at the age of 9 or 10 years, ran from school, found means (no body knew how) to pass over James river, and then travelled through the woods to his native home, though the nearest distance was three hundred miles, carrying no provision with him, nor having any thing to subsist on in his journey but berries, acorns, and such like as the wood afforded.

They know the north point whereever they are; one guide is by a certain moss that grows most on the north side of trees.

Their sagacity in tracing the footsteps of one another is no less wonderful: on a dry surface, where none but themselves are able to discern the least impression of any thing, they often make discoveries; but on moist land that is capable of impression, they will give a near guess, not only of the number of Indians that have passed, but by the make and stitching of their Mockasins, will know of what nation they are, and consequently whether friends or enemies. This is a piece of knowledge on which great consequences depend; therefore, they who excel in it are highly esteemed, because these discoveries enable them to ambuscade their enemies, as well as to evade surprises from them; and also to escape from a superior number by a timely discovery of their numerous tracks. (Cateby, 1731-43, vol. 2, pp. XII-XIII.)

Says Byrd:

The Indians, who have no way of travelling but on the Hoof, make nothing of going 25 miles a day, and carrying their little Necessaries at their backs, and Sometimes a Stout Pack of Skins into the Bargain. And very often they laugh at the English, who can't Stir to Next Neighbour without a Horse, and say that 2 Legs are too much for such lazy people, who cannot visit their next neighbour without six. (Bassett, 1901, p. 266.)

Lawson on the same subject:

They are expert travelers, and though they have not the use of our artificial compass, yet they understand the north-point exactly, let them be in never so great a wilderness. One guide is a short moss, that grows upon some trees, exactly on the north-side thereof.

Besides, they have names for eight of the thirty-two points, and call the winds by their several names, as we do; but indeed more properly; for the north-west wind is called the cold wind; the north-east, the wet wind; the south, the warm wind, and so agreeable of the rest. Sometimes it happens that they have a large river or lake to pass over, and the weather is very foggy, as it often happens in the spring and fall of the leaf; so that they cannot see which course to steer; in such a case, they being on one side of the river or lake, they know well enough what course such a place, (which

they intend for) bears from them. Therefore, they get a great many sticks and chunks of wood in their canoe and then set off directly for their port, and now and then throw over a piece of wood, which directs them, by seeing how the stick bears from the canoe stern, which they always observe to keep right aft; and this is the Indian compass, by which they will go over a broad water ten or twenty leagues wide. They will find the head of any river, though it is five, six, or seven hundred miles off, and they never were there in their lives before, as is often proved by their appointing to meet on the head of such a river, where, perhaps, none of them ever was before, but where they shall rendezvous exactly at the prefixed time; and if they meet with any obstruction, they leave certain marks in the way where they that come after, will understand how many have passed by already, and which way they are gone. Besides, in their war-expeditions, they have very certain hieroglyphicks, whereby each party informs the other of the success or losses they have met withal; all which is so exactly performed by their sylvian marks and characters, that they are never at a loss to understand one another. . .. They will draw maps very exactly of all the rivers, towns, mountains and roads, or what you shall enquire of them, which you may draw by their directions, and come to a small matter of latitude, reckoned by their day's journeys. These maps they will draw in the ashes of the fire, and sometimes upon a mat or piece of bark. I have put a pen and ink into a savage's hand, and he has drawn me the rivers, bays, and other parts of a country, which afterwards I have found to agree with a great deal of nicety. (Lawson, 1860, pp. 331-333. See also Strachey as quoted on page 258.)

In describing the hunting customs of the Caddo, Solís says:

In securing their supplies they are very wise and cunning; when they have to cross a plain, they remain within the woods for some time, observing carefully to see if there is anything unusual, and if not, they cut a big branch from a tree in order to travel under cover so that those from a distance may not know that it is a man. In order to spy on the people who come in or go out of the woods, they climb a large tree which has a big high top and is near the road; from there they search out and see everything without being (Solís, 1931, pp. 69-70; Swanton, 1942, pp. 132–138.)

seen.

DEER HUNTING

With great acuteness Indians sometimes speak of the deer as their sheep, though, outside of the bison country, the deer meant more to the ancient North Americans than did sheep to most peoples of the Old World. In that part of the continent with which we are concerned, it was the main source of animal food and the principal source of raw material for clothing, besides performing other incidental functions.

De Soto's men found deer meat and deer hides in use from one end of the Gulf region to the other. Hariot, the first writer who gives us what might fairly be called an ethnological account of any part of the section unless we except Peter Martyr, says:

In some places there are great store [of deer]: neere vnto the sea coast they are of the ordinarie bignes as ours in England, & some lesse: but further up into the countrey where there is better seed they are greater: they differ from

ours onely in this, their tailes are longer and the snags of their hornes looke backward. (Hariot, 1893, p. 29.)

Strachey speaks of them thus:

They have divers beasts fitt for provision; the chief are deare, both redd and fallow; great store in the country towards the heads of the rivers, though not so many amongst the rivers. In our island, about James Towne, are some few nothing differing from ours in England, but that some of them the antletts of their hornes are not so manie. Our people have seen two hundred, one hundred, and fifty in a herd. (Strachey, 1849, p. 122.)

The early white colonists were in the habit of employing Indians to hunt for them and do other kinds of work. This is mentioned by Lawson (1860, p. 146), and Samuel Wilson, writing of South Carolina in 1682, tells us deer were so plentiful "that an Indian hunter hath killed Nine fat Deere in a day all shot by himself, and all the considerable Planters have an Indian Hunter which they hire for less than Twenty shillings a year, and one hunter will very well find a Family of Thirty people, with as much venison and foul as they can well eat." (Carroll, 1836, vol. 2, p. 28.)

Hunters either stalked the deer singly or killed them by means of surrounds, devices which might be called respectively the cat and dog methods of hunting. To start up all kinds of game they fired the woods or canebrakes.

Deer stalking is described by our authorities as observed among the Powhatan Indians, the Siouan tribes, the Chickasaw and Choctaw, the Timucua, and the Natchez. The Timucua account, given by Le Moyne in connection with one of his sketches, is the oldest of these, dating from 1565:

The Indians have a way of hunting deer which we never saw before. They manage to put on the skins of the largest which have been taken, in such a manner, with the heads on their own heads, so that they can see out through the eyes as through a mask. Thus accoutered they can approach close to the deer without frightening them. They take advantage of the time when the animals come to drink at the river, and, having their bow and arrows all ready, easily shoot them, as they are very plentiful in those regions. (Le Moyne, 1875, p. 10 (illus.); Swanton, 1922, p. 357.)

This differs from most other accounts in representing use of the entire skin and in stating that the Indian clothed himself with it, his head being inserted into the deer's head. Usually they employed only the head, but, if we may trust Smith, the Virginia Indians did make use of the entire skin:

One Savage hunting alone, useth the skinne of a Deare slit on the one side, and so put on his arme, through the neck, so that his hand comes to the head which is stuffed, and the hornes, head, eies, eares, and every part as arteficially counterfeited as they can devise. Thus shrowding his body in the skinne, by stalking he approacheth the Deare, creeping on the ground from one tree to another. If the Deare chance to find fault, or stande at gaze, hee turneth the head

with his hand to his best advantage to seeme like a Deare, also gazing and licking himself. So watching his best advantage to approach, having shot him, hee chaseth him by his blood and straine till he get him. (Smith, Tyler ed., 1907, p. 105.)

A Santee Indian, from the country midway between the last two, employed the head only. He carried

an artificial head to hunt withal. They are made of the head of a buck, the back part of the horns being scraped and hollow for the lightness of carriage. The skin is left to the setting on of the shoulders, which is lined all round with small hoops, and flat sort of laths, to hold it open for the arms to go in. They have a way to preserve the eyes, as if living." The hunter puts on a match coat made of deer skin, with the hair on, and a piece of the white part of the deer skin that grows on the breast, which is fastened to the neck end of this stalking head, so hangs down. In these habiliments an Indian will go as near a deer as he pleases, the exact motions and behaviour of a deer being so well counterfeited by them, that several times it hath been known for two hunters to come up with a stalking head together, and unknown to each other, so that they have killed an Indian instead of a deer, which hath happened sometimes to a brother or some dear friend; for which reason they allow not of that sort of practice where the nation is populous. (Lawson, 1860, p. 44; Catesby, 1731-43, vol. 2, p. x.)

The Indians of this section-and the same was true of most of those of the Southeast-carefully preserved the bones of the animals they ate and burned them "as being of opinion that if they omitted that custom the game would leave their country, and they should not be able to maintain themselves by their hunting."

A little farther south, in Georgia, is a small stream, an affluent of the Ocmulgee known as Echeconnee, but on the older maps Icho-cunno, which means, in the Muskogee language, "deer trap." It was so called because the deer used to resort to it for a certain kind of food of which they were fond and the conformity of the banks prevented them from escaping readily when pursued by hunters.

Speck's informants remembered the use of the stuffed deer head which the hunter "put over his shoulders or elevated on a stick in front of him when he was approaching the deer" (Speck, 1907, p. 22). At intervals during his approach to the intended victim the Indian sang a magic song, given by Speck (1907, p. 19).

MacCauley heard of deer stalking among the Seminole, but, curiously enough, his informants did not speak of using a decoy deer head:

The Seminole always hunt their game on foot. They can approach a deer to within sixty yards by their method of rapidly nearing him while he is feeding, and standing perfectly still when he raises his head. They say that they are able to discover by certain movements on the part of the deer when the head is about to be lifted. They stand side to the animal. They believe that they can thus deceive the deer, appearing to them as stumps of trees. (MacCauley, 1887, p. 512.)

17 "The eyes are well represented by the globular shining seeds of the Pavia, or scarlet flowering horse-chestnut" (Catesby, 1731–1743, vol. 2, p. xII.)