Cais.-het.] 4<4 [Feb. 20, 



made them understand that they were accustomed to wash their faces and 

 not to eal before the sun had gone down. 



Another object closely connected with their beliefs was the sacred number 

 tlirre. While the Maskoki tribes had a traditional reverence for the number 

 four on account of the four points of the compass and the winds coming 

 from each of these four quarters, and while they assigned a particular color 

 to each of these lour points, we find over a dozen references in De 

 Laudonniere to a worship of the number three among the Timucua. They 

 fasted three days at the death of a chief, their scalp-dances lasted three 

 days and three nights ; at the toya festivity, which probably represents the 

 greeu-corn festivity of other Indians, men ran into the woods, as if crazed, 

 and stayed there three days, while the women cut themselves and their 

 daughters, crying " he toya /" Even in Pareja this number is alluded to, 

 for he mentions that chiefs just coming into power ordered a new fire to be 

 made in their cabins to burn during six days, and at sowing time the chiefs 

 caused six old men (ano miso) to eat a pot of fritters. Six is the double of 

 three. The holy fire in the temple of the sun, among the Naktche, was 

 fed by three logs only ; and a Peruvian creation myth pretends that three 

 eggs fell from the skies ; from the golden egg issued the royal family, from 

 the silver egg the nobility, and from tbe copper egg the commoners. 



Concerning their mode of sustenance the Timucua stood high above the 

 northern savages, for they tilled the soil and were not altogether at the 

 mercy of nature, when an inclement summer season had deprived them of 

 food. A hoe, made of a heavy fish bone or shell adjusted to the end of a 

 stick, served in loosening the compact soil ; the women made grooves in 

 the ground by hand and carefully deposited maize -seeds in each of them. 

 Here the agricultural work did not devolve entirely on the women, for the 

 males turned the soil with their hoes. They made artificial ponds to let 

 fish, eels, turtles, etc., come in, and afterwards caught them when needed . 

 They were drinking the black drink, an exhilarating beverage made from 

 the cassine plant (also known among the Creeks), and to this, probably, 

 refers the charge of drunkenness made by Pareja. They ate alligators, 

 snakes, dogs, and almost every kind of quadrupeds and fruits, and were 

 seen mixing coals and sand in their food ; their main staple, however, was 

 maize, and the French saw them kissing the "baskets of mill, " tapaga 

 tapola, standing before them. 



During the three or four months of the rainy season they retired to the 

 woods and lived there in huts covered with palmetto leaves. They did so 

 evidently to avoid the burning rays of the subtropical sun. 



About their arts and domestic life not much is transmitted to us. The 

 term taca ni timutema, "my fire is out" (Proc. of 1878, page 496), shows 

 that they kept up the tire in the lodge all day. The description of the 

 town, with the chief's house on a mound, as seen by Hernando de Soto on 

 Tampa Bay, is too well known to need repetition here. The ordinary 

 settlements of the Timucua were a conglomerate of huts surrounded by 

 strong palisade fences, not unlike the kraals (from Span, corral, medieval 



