528 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
aided in the field-work. Indeed, so general was this custom, that I do 
not know of a single prominent tribe living east of the Mississippi and 
within the limits named, in which this can not be shown to have been 
the case.* The Choctaws, as we have seen, were a nation of farmers, 
and helped their wives in the labors of the field and in many other 
kinds of work;+ the Muscogees rarely went to war until they had 
helped the women to plant a sufficient plenty of provisions, ¢ and Haw- 
kins tells us that to constitute a legal marriage among them, a man 
must, among other things, ‘ build a house, make his crop, and gather 
it in, then make his hunt, and bring home the meat;” and that when 
ali this was put in possession of the wife, the ceremony was ended, or 
as the Indians express it ‘the woman was bound, and not till then.”§ 
Among the Natchez and kindred tribes, the men not only cleared 
the fields and worked the crops,|| but in one field, that in which was 
raised the corn destined for use in the feast of the ‘ Busk” or First 
Fruits, the ground was prepared and cultivated by the warriors alone, 
and the women were not allowed to take any part in the work at any 
stage.f{] Slavery was common among all these nations from the earlies 
times, as it was also among tribes belonging to the Huron and Algon- 
quin families of the North, that being the usual lot of the captives, 
especially of the women and children. In the time of De Soto we are 
told that some of these tribes had many ‘foreign Indian slaves, 
taken in war, whom they put to tilling the ground and other sorts of 
labor; and that they might not run away, they used to cut their heels, 
or some sinews in their legs, so that they were all lame.”** At a later 
time, the custom of enslaving captives still existed, tt though I do not 
find that they were mutilated in order to prevent their escape. itis 
quite probable however that this was still sometimes done, as Lawson 
*Laudonniére, J. c.,p. 174. Bartram, pp. 194, 226, 512. Adair, pp. 407-430. 
Romans, p. &. Memoir of Tonti, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, vol. 1, p. 63. Le 
Moyne, plate xxi: Frankfort ad Moenum, 1591. 
t Bernard Romans, East and West Florida, pp. 71, 83, 85: London. 
t Adair, History of American Indians, p. 255: London, 1775. 
§ Sketch of the Creek Country, in Collections Georgia Hist. Soc., p. 42. School- 
craft, Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. V., p. 267. 
||Du Pratz, Hist, of Louisiana, vol. 1, pp. 168-189: London, 1763. Among the 
Tonicas on west side of the Mississippi, ‘‘the men do what peasants do in France; 
they cultivate and dig the earth, plant and harvest the crops, cut the wood and 
bring it to the cabin,” etc. Father Gravier, in Shea’s Larly Voyages, p. 134: Albany, 
1861. Compare St. Cosme in same, p. 81. 
q Du Pratz, vol. 7, p. 189. 
** Herrera, History of America, vol. Vv, p.320: London, 1740. 
ttM. Penicaut, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, new series, pp. 123, 124: New York, 1869. 
Brinton, Floridian Peninsula, p. 141: Philadelphia, 1859. Bartram, Travels through 
Florida, pp. 186, 213,507. Narrative of La Salle’s voyage down the Mississippi by 
Father Membré, in Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi, p. 171: New York, 
1852. Du Pratz, Louisiana, vol. u, p. 249. Schooleraft, Indian Tribes, vol. v, p. 260. 
Timberlake, Memories relating to the Cherokees, p. 90: London, 1765. Herrera, vol. 
VI, p, 260: London, 1740, 
