54 OF NORTH CAROLINA. 



have abundance of storks and cranes in their sa- 

 vannas. They take them before they can fly, and 

 breed them as tame and familiar as a dunghill 

 fowl. They had a tame crane at one of these 

 cabins, that was scarcely less than six feet in 

 heighth. His head being round, with a shining, nat- 

 ural crimson hue, which they all have. These are 

 a very comely sort of Indians, there being a strange 

 difference in the proportions and beauty of these 

 heathens. Although their tribes or nations bor- 

 der one upon another, yet you may discern as 

 great an alteration in their features and disposi- 

 tions, as you can in their speech, which generally 

 proves quite different from each other, though 

 their nations be not above ten or twenty miles 

 in distance. The women here being as handsome 

 as most I have met withal, being several fine fin- 

 gered brounettos amongst them. These lasses 

 stick not upon hand long, for they marry when 

 ^fcry young, as at twelve or fourteen years of age. 

 The English traders are seldom without an Indian 

 female for his bed fellow, alleging these reasons 

 as sufficient to allow of such familiarty, first, they 

 being remote from any white people, that it pre- 

 serves their friendship with the heathens, they es- 

 teeming a white man's child much above one of 

 their getting, the Indian misses ever securing her 

 white friend provisions whilst he stays amongst 

 them ; and lastly, this correspondence makes them 

 learn the Indian tongue much the sooner, they 

 being of the Frenchman's opinion, how that an 



