338 LAW SON'S HISTORY 



stew and make fruit bread and cakes. In some 

 parts where pigeons are plentiful, they get of their 

 fat enough to supply their winter stores. Thus 

 they abide in these quarters all the winter long, 

 till the time approach for planting their maiz 

 and other fruits. 



In these quarters, at spare hours, the women 

 make baskets and mats to lie upon, and those that 

 are not extraordinary hunters, make bowls, dishes 

 and spoons, of gumwood, and the tulip tree, oth- 

 ers, where they find a vein of white clay, fit for 

 their purpose, make tobacco pipes, all which are 

 often transported to other Indians, that perhaps 

 have greater plenty of deer and other game ; so 

 thay buy, with these manufactures, their raw skins, 

 with the hair on, which our neighboring Indians 

 bring to their towns, and, in the summer time, 

 make the slaves and sorry hunters dress thejn, the 

 winter sun being not strong enough to dry them ; 

 and those that are dried in the cabins are black 

 and nasty with the lightwood smoke, which they 

 commonly burn. Their way of dressing their 

 skins is, by soaking them in water, so they get the 

 hair off with an instrument made of the bone of 

 a deer's foot ; yet some use a sort of iron drawing 

 knife, which they purchase of the English, and af- 

 ter the hair is off they dissolve deer's brains, which 

 before hand are made in a cake and baked in the 

 embers, in a bowl of water, so soak the skins there- 

 in till the brains have sucked up the water ; then 

 they dry it gently, and keep working it with an 



