Notices of the Floridas, &ec. 133 
three thousand, who are sociably grouped in small villages, 
principally in the secondary or rolling districts, uniting the 
hunter, pastoral, and agricultural states of society. The 
men hunt, erect dwellings, and attend to their cattle. 
They have many dogs of European species, but rarely use 
them in pursuit of game. On hunting excursions, they 
often lie in ambush with their rifles, on the border of a 
thicket, and arrest the deer with unerring aim, as they is- 
sue forth at dusk to graze on verdant prairies. Fire 
mode is prohibited among the whites as dangerous. For- 
tunate hunters supply their less successful neighbours. 
The Seminoles formerly possessed large herds of fine 
cattle, but lost many during the late civil war. ey 
have hogs and poultry. The male Indians regard agricul- 
tural labour as degrading,—but every settlement has its 
enclosed and cultivated field, often extensive. The 
ground is prepared, planted, and tended, by females, with 
hoes, raising good crops of corn, sweet potatoes, pump- 
kins, beans, roots, and tobacco, on fertile hills, and rice in 
swamps. milk, make butter, procure wood and 
water, and do all the drudgery. The wives and daughters 
of chiefs are not exempted from labour; some of the 
principal Indians, following the example of their civilized 
neighbours, are proprietors of blacks, mostly born in the 
Indian region, and occupy separate villages. They are 
well treated, being rarely required to do much labour, ex- 
cept in pressing seasons of tillage, have acquired the erect 
independent bearing and manners of the aborigines, and 
are faithful. There is a mixed race, in form and intelli- 
gence superior to the Indian and negro. 
The male Indians, in warm weather, are almost divest- 
ed of clothing, but females are modestly dressed, ordinari- 
ly with short gown and petticoat, imitating the fashions of 
the whites, from whom the materials are procured in ex- 
change for skins, furs, mocasins, leather, venison, nut oil, 
&c. Females have ornaments of silver in their ears, and 
around their necks and arms; married women wear plates 
of silver on their breasts, sometimes suspended by small 
silver chains—they behave with modesty and propriety : 
long slits are sometimes obseryed in the ears of both sex- 
