Ciwhing.] 44b [Mov. 6, 



of the points they consider, as clear from my side as they were in 

 my written notes, and as I trust they now are in the fuller text. 

 Hence, it is not only appropriate, but seems to me a duty, to here furnish 

 comments on three or four of these. 



Regarding Dr. Brinton's reference to the mounds on Tanij^a Bay, I 

 find, from the notes of the discussion, that I did not give the subject suf- 

 ficient attention. I should have stated more fully, that the mounds which 

 have been identified, as those discovered by De Soto, were of iirecisely 

 the kind I have described as occurring on Pine Island. That is, they are 

 not true keys, for they are situated on the mainland, and they are com- 

 posed of earth and shell combined, as were all the mounds near the gulf 

 coast of Florida that I have described as probably the works of the 

 descendants or successors of the kej^ dwellers proper. True typical 

 shell keys, no fewer than five of them, occur along the Manatee, below 

 the opposite' or southward side of Tampa Bay, but these are quite cer- 

 tainly not the mounds referred to as occupied at the time of De Soto. 

 They are either islands, or contiguous to islands. Nevertheless one of 

 them was apparently connected with a later series of earth-works which 

 seem to have been subsidiary, like those of Pine Island, Xaples and the 

 Caloosahatchee region. It was in the region of these latter, and of the 

 Okeechobee, that the renowned Chief Sequene and his successors, rulers 

 over the Caloosas, held sway, and it was principally among these peo- 

 ple — far inland, and more than a hundi'ed miles northeastwardly from 

 the Key Marco region, that Fontaneda seems to have lived. That the 

 particular peoples mentioned by him were not the same as the key 

 dwellers proper — certainly not the same in period and degree of develop- 

 ment — may be inferred from the single fact that they were, as Dr. Brin- 

 ton quotes, "fine archers ; " whereas, I have shown that the true key 

 dwellers were not possessed of the bow at r.ll, but used atlatls and 

 throwing arrows instead, and were not unacquainted, apparently, with 

 the blow gun, — both, I may remark, distinctively South American types 

 of weapon. That they derived these and other things already de- 

 scribed, from the Arawaks of a period suflficiently remote to allow time 

 for their domestication — so to say — in this region, still seems to me 

 probable. 



While there is much to indicate the comparatively recent introduction 

 into both the Antilles and Florida of the Caribbean element, it seems to 

 me almost certain that if, as is generally affirmed, the Arawaks were the 

 true aborigines of the Greater Antilles, then thej' must have reached 

 those islands much more anciently than Dr. Brintou is inclined to allow, 

 — for some of the cave remains already found there give positive indica- 

 tion of high antiquit,y. Again authorities disagree as to the linguistic 

 evidence of Antillean — Carib and Arawak — connection with the natives 

 of southern Florida. An impartial examination of published and unpub- 

 lished vocabularies convinces me that there is quite as much to prove 

 such connection as has been ])rought fcn-ward 1o i)rove Maskokian con- 



