304 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 43 



is at their head. At a whistle they brealc their circle and mingle together, 

 always keeping time. Then, on a second whistle, they reform their circle with 

 astonishing accuracy. They have other dances besides, of which I will speak 

 later more fully. [See pi. 4, a.] 



We slept at the house of the great chief on beds of canes which are plaited 

 and tied, like beds of sacking (lits de sangles), Interlaced with each other and 

 covered with buffalo skins. The next morning we went to walk in their fields 

 w'here they sow their corn. The women were there with their men, working. 

 The savages have flat, bent sticks, which they use to hoe the ground, for they 

 do not know how to work it as is done in France. They scratch the soil with 

 these crooked sticks and uproot with them the canes and the weeds which 

 they leave on the earth in the sun during fifteen days or a month. Then they 

 set fire to them, and when they are reduced to ashes they have a stick as 

 large as the arm, pointed at one end, with which they make holes in the earth 

 3 feet apart; they put into each hole seven or eight grains of corn and cover 

 them with earth. It is thus that they sow their corn and their beans. When 

 the corn is a foot high they take great care, as in France, to get rid of the 

 weeds which get into it, and repeat it two or three times a year. They make 

 use even now of their wooden hoes, because they find them lighter, although we 

 have given them hoes of iron. 



We remained some days in this village, and then we returned to our fort.*^ 



Like Penicaut, Iberville speaks of this village as if it belonged to 

 the Pascagoula tribe alone : 



The 29th [of April, 1700] I repaired at 7 in the morning to the village, 

 in which there are about 20 families. This nation has been destroyed, like 

 the other [1. e., the Biloxi], by diseases; the few who remain are well-formed 

 people, especially the women; they have the best figures of any I have seen hi 

 this country. Having known that I was going to come to their village they 

 made me a cabin entirely new. One can go from this village to the fort 

 [Biloxi] in a day by land. * * * [The Choctaw] are five days' journey 

 from this village, straight to the north. The village of the Mobile is three 

 days [journey] from here, to the northeast. * * * 6 



After this time, however, French endeavor was divided between 

 Mobile on one side and the Mississippi on the other, little attention 

 being paid to the small tribes intervening. The only reference to 

 them in La Harpe is to the etfect that the Pascagonla declared war 

 against the Tawasa in March, 1707, but Bienville reconciled the two.'' 

 This probably had something to do with the first settlement of the 

 Taw^asa at Mobile. Unlike the Biloxi, the Pascagoula appear to 

 have remained near the place where w^e first find them. Dumont 

 gives an account of their temple and mortuary ceremonies as if, in 

 his time, they constituted one village with the Biloxi,'' in which case 

 he probably visited them just after the return of the latter from the 

 neighborhood of New Orleans. 



Du Pratz (1718-1720) has the following to say of them: 



Returning toward the sea and to the west of Mobile is the little nation of 

 Pachca-Ogoulas, which the French call Pascagoulas. This nation is situated 



"Margry, Decouverte.s, v, :388-391, 188:1 



''n)id.,iv, 427, 1880. 



>' La Ilarpo, .Tour. Hist., 101, 1831. 



"^To be published in the introduction to a forthcoming bulU'tiii <>u the Biloxi language. 



