94 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY . [BULL, 69 
they rub the head, temple and other parts, which is reckon’d a pre- 
server of the sight, and strengthener of the Brain.”’ 
Continuing their journey through the wilderness they soon reached 
the town of the Saponi, on the banks of the Yadkin, in the vicinity 
of the present Salisbury, near the center of the State of North Caro- 
lina. The village was protected by palisades, but the houses were 
not described, although it was said that near the town (p. 25) 
‘‘within their cleared land are several Bagnios, or Sweating Houses, 
made of stone in shape like a large oven.’”’ These were quite different 
from the light, quickly made structures encountered among the 
Waxsaw. The night the party rested at Saponi the entire palisade 
was blown down by a violent wind from the northwest. They next 
arrived at ‘‘the Keyauwee’s Town,” which was protected by pal- 
isades similar to those surrounding the Saponi village. The Key- 
auwee town was, as suggested by Mooney, about 30 miles northeast 
of the Yadkin, in the neighborhood of the present High Point, 
Guilford County, North Carolina. 
From these meager references to certain settlements it is possible 
to visualize the general appearance of towns among the eastern 
Siouan tribes. Many of the villages were protected by encircling 
palisades, and within the most prominent structure was the round 
town house, or ‘‘theater,’’ of Lawson. Surrounding this were the 
dwellings of the people, and these probably resembled the “ arbour- 
like’’ structures of the neighboring Algonquian tribes. 
The Siouan tribes of the far south—that is, the Biloxi and the 
neighboring Pascagoula and Moctobi of the Gulf coast region, and 
the Ofo, or Ofogoula, whose home was in the valley of the Yazoo, 
in the present State of Mississippi—appear to have followed the 
general custom of the people of the southern country and erected 
houses of wattle, covered with clay in a plastic state. ‘ The principal 
villages were protected by “‘palings”’ or palisades, and if the descrip- 
tion of the Biloxi village visited by Iberville in 1700 is to be accepted 
as accurate, and if it was a typical village of the time and region, 
then the method of surrounding and protecting a group of dwellings 
was far more secure and complicated in the south than among the 
northern tribes. 
During the spring of the year 1700 Iberville discovered the ruins 
of the Biloxi town on the bank of the Pascagoula, about 20 miles 
above its mouth, and wrote of it (Margry, (1), IV, pp. 425-426): 
“The village is abandoned, the nation having been destroyed two 
years ago by sickness. Two leagues below this village one begins 
to find many deserted spots quite near each other on both banks of 
the river. The savages report that this nation was formerly quite 
numerous. It did not appear to me that there had been in this 
village more than from thirty to forty cabins, built long, and the 
