Gatsehet.J ^^^ [April 6, 



enabled to traco the outlines of its ancient area through a careful analysis 

 of these jreograpiiical terms. 



Like the otlier Fioridiuns, the Timucua were a people of large bodily 

 proportions, lighter couiplexioued in the North, darker in the South, but 

 exhibiting tliroughout that i)eeuliar admixture to their cinnamon liue, 

 whicli is called olimtre by the French. For their subsistence they did not 

 rely merely on the abundance of lish, eels and turtles, which peopled their 

 rivers, ponds and lakes, but they also sowed the fields and hunted all sorts 

 of game. Like other Indians they were addicted to polygamy, gross sen- 

 suality, sorcery and other superstitious practices, of which Pareja's books 

 atford many curious examples. The population was divided in two por- 

 tions, separated from each other in the strictest manner ; the nobility, all 

 of whose numerous pedigrees traced their origin to the sacred persons of 

 the actual monarch or his i)redect'ssors, and the common people, which also 

 preserved with piety the memory of its ancestors by long genealogical reg- 

 isters. No doubt an aristocratic spirit pervaded the civil and political 

 institutions of these tribes, and if from this we are allowed to draw any 

 conclusion referring to their antiquity, it would tend towards establishing 

 a very protracted residence of the Timucua in these same regions, where 

 the European explorers discovered them, and a comparative isolation and 

 non-intercourse with surrounding nations. 



For further ethnological information I refer to Dr. Dan. G. Brinton's 

 "Notes on the Floridian Peninsula, its literary history, Indian tribes and 

 antiquities, Phila. 1851),'" as well as to the writers on the ancient history of 

 the country, as Basanier, Barcia, Bristock, Fontanedo, Ilerrera, Roberts, 

 etc., and to the three chroniclers of the illustrious expedition of Hernando 

 de Soto (1539— 1043). 



Only two writers are known to have composed books in the Timucua 

 language; the priest Gregorio de Mouilla (of Mobile?) Avhose Doctrina 

 Christiana is probably lost now, and the Franciscan Padre Francesco 

 Pareja. Born at Aunon, in the Spanish diocese of Toledo, Parejawas with 

 eleven other priests commissioned to Florida by the "Royal Council of the 

 Indies," arrived there in 1594, converted man}' of the natives and founded 

 the monastery imstodin) of Franciscans at St. Helena. 12 leagues North of 

 San Augustine. In IGIO he removed to the city of Mexico, wrote a series 

 of books, all of which were printed in Mexico, and died there January 25, 

 1628. Of his Grammar (Arte) and Dictionar}' (Bocabulario) of the Timu- 

 cua and of some minor religious tracts in this language no cojiy is known 

 to exist at present in any library, though some may turn up some time in 

 Spain or in the Mexican States. I derived my information from two origi- 

 nal Catechisms, bound in one volume, and from a Confessionario of Pareja, 

 printed 1G12 and 1013 in Ifimo. and brought from Spain to New York by 

 Mr. Buckingham Smith, once Secretary of the American Legation at the 

 Court of Madrid. So careless and unreliable is the orthography of these 

 texts and of the Spanish version standing opposite, that doubts arise 

 whether Pareja himself, who, according to llervas, lived at Mexico when 



