XXX INTRODUCTION. 



to as much as it saw fit to cultivate. The clearing pro- 

 cess — a most toilsome one — consisted in hacking off 

 branches, piling them together with brushwood around 

 the foot of the standing trunks, and setting fire to the 

 whole. The squaws, working with their hoes of wood 

 and bone among the charred stumps, sowed their corn, 

 beans, pumpkins, tobacco, sunflowers, and Huron hemp. 

 No manure was used ; but, at intervals of from ten to 

 thirty years, when the soil was exhausted, and firewood 

 distant, the village was abandoned and a new one built. 



There was little game in the Huron country; and 

 here, as among the Iroquois, the staple of food was 

 Indian corn, cooked without salt in a variety of forms, 

 each more odious than the last. Yenison was a luxury 

 found only at feasts ; dog-flesh was in high esteem ; and, 

 in some of the towns captive bears were fattened for 

 festive occasions. These tribes were far less improvident 

 than the roving Algonquins, and stores of provision were 

 laid up against a season of want. Their main stock of 

 corn was buried in caches^ or deep holes in the earth, 

 either within or without the houses. 



In respect to the arts of life, all these stationary tribes 

 were in advance of the wandering hunters of the North. 

 The women made a species of earthen pot for cooking, 

 but these were supplanted by the copper kettles of the 

 French traders. They wove rush mats with no little 



quois adopted the same practice at an early period, omitting the ditch and 

 embankment; and it is probable, that, even in their primitive defences, 

 the palisades, where the ground was of a nature to yield easily to their 

 rude implements, were planted simply in holes dug for the purpose. Such 

 seems to have been the Iroquois fortress attacked by Champlain in 1615. 



The Muscogees, with other Southern tribes, and occasionally the 

 Algonquins, had palisaded towns ; but the pahsades were usually but a 

 single row, planted upright. The tribes of Virginia occasionally sur- 

 rounded their dwellings with a triple palisade. — ■ Beverly, History of 

 Virginia, 149. 



