THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 529 
speaks of an Indian captive who had been thus treated by the Senecas, 
but who had nevertheless managed to escape and find his way back 
to North Carolina in that crippled condition.* These nations excelled 
in manufactures, such as pipes, pottery, and wickerwork,+ and seem 
always to have had more or less traffic among themselves. ¢ Indeed, 
Herrera speaks of “merchants that travelled up the country,” and the 
experience of Cabeca de Vaca among the Indians of Texas, as a dealer 
in flint and other articles, which he brought from the interior and bar- 
tered with the Indians of the coast, would seem to be decisive as to 
the existence among them of a class of pedlers. § 
Of the tribes that lived on the west bank of the Mississippi, our ae- 
counts are not so full; but from what we do know of them, it is safe to 
say that in their manner of life they did not differ materially from 
their neighbors on the other side of the great river. In the time of La 
Salle, A. D. 1682, they lived in fixed villages (‘‘ sedentaires”),|| as they 
had done some hundred and fifty years before, when De Soto swept 
through that country like a tornado, and they still cultivated corn in 
great abundance.{{ Peach, plum, and apple trees were found among 
the tribes living near the mouth of the Arkansas;** and these same 
tribes are said to have had great quantities of domestic fowls, including 
flocks of turkeys; tt in short, to have been “ half-civilized.”*4 As Joutel 
* Lawson, Carolina, p.53: London, 1718. 
t Adair, p. 423: London, 1775. Du Pratz, Louisiana, book tv, chap. iii, see. 5: Lon- 
don, 1763. 
¢Herrera, vol. v, p.310: London, 1740. Laudonniére in Hakluyt’s Voyages, vol. 
lI, p. 869: London, 1810. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. v, 
p. 692. 
§‘‘With my merchandise and trade I went into the interior as far as I pleased, 
and travelled along the coast 40 or 50 leagues. The principal wares were cones 
and other pieces of sea snail, conches used for cutting, and fruit like a bean, of the 
highest value among them, which they use as a medicine, andemploy in their dances 
and festivities. Among other matters were sea beads. Such were what I carried 
into the interior; and in barter I got and brought back skins, ochre, with which 
they rub and color the fac, hard canes of which to make arrows, sinews, cement, 
and flint for the heads, and tassels of the hair of deer, that by dyeing they make red. 
This occupation suited me well; for the travel allowed me liberty to go where I 
wished, Iwas not obliged to work, and was not treated as a slave. Wherever I 
went [received fair treatment, and the Indians gave me to eat out of regard to my 
commodities.” Relation of Cabeca de Vaca, translated by Buckingham Smith, pp. 
85, et seg.: New York, 1871. 
|| Memoirs of the Sieur de Tonti, in Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, p. 64. 
4] Narratives of Fathers Marquette and Mombre, in Discovery and Exploration of 
the Mississippi, pp. 48, 169,177. Memoir of Tonti, and Joutel’s Journal, both in 
Hist. Coll. of Louisiana, part 1, pp. 63, 65, 151, 153, 163, ete. The latter author in 
Margry, vol. 111, p. 462, Paris, tells us that the Kappas had a field a league in length 
by 14 in width. 
ELON nts iC..sp. (Ol: 
tt Narrative of Father Membré, 1. ¢c., p. 169. 
tilbid., p. 172. ‘‘ Nothing barbarous but the name.” Narrative of Father Douay, 
in Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi, p. 203. 
H. Mis. 334, pt. 1—34 
