48 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [kill. 73 
come to Indians almost certainly of Muskhogean stock. The follow- 
ing is Oviedo's description : 
The country of Gualdape, as well as from the river of Santa Elena toward the west, 
is all level. The Spaniards who came with the licentiate Ayllon did not see the vil- 
lages; they only met with a few isolated houses or cabins forming little hamlets, at 
great distances one from the other. On some of the small islands on the coast there are 
certain mosques or temples of those idolatrous people and many remains [bones] of 
their dead, those of the elders apart from those of the young people or children. They 
look like the ossuaries or burying places of the common people; the bodies of their 
principal people are in temples by themselves or in little chapels in another community 
and also on little islands. And those houses or temples have walls of stone and mortar 
(which mortar they make of oyster shells) and they are about one estado and a half in 
height, 1 the rest of the building above this wall being made of wood (pine). There 
are many pines there. There are several principal 2 houses all along the coast and 
each one of them must be considered by those people to be a village, for they are very 
big and they are constructed of very tall and beautiful pines, leaving the crown of 
leaves at the top. After having set up one row of trees to form one wall, they set up 
the opposite side, leaving a space between the two sides of from 15 to 30 feet, the 
length of the walls being 300 or more feet. As they intertwine the branches at the 
top and so in this manner there is no need for a tiled roof or other covering, they 
cover it all with matting interwoven between the logs where there may be hollows 
or open places. Furthermore they can cross those beams with other [pines] placed 
lengthwise on the inside, thus increasing the thickness of their walls. In this way the 
wall is thick and strong, because the beams are very close together. In each one of 
those houses there is easily room enough for 200 men and in Indian fashion they can 
live in them, placing the opening for the door where it is most convenient. 3 
Lower down Oviedo mentions "blackberries, which, being dried, 
the Indians keep to eat in the winter." 4 This is practically all the 
ethnological information which the historians of the Ayllon expedi- 
tions furnish. It is interesting to find the mat communal house, 
which does not appear to have been used by the Creeks, in existence 
so far south, but Oviedo is probably in error in representing the walls 
as constructed of living trees. The ossuaries described show that 
the custom of erecting them, so common along the lower Mississippi, 
extended eastward as far as the Atlantic. 
Our next information regarding the Cusabo and their neighbors 
comes from the chroniclers of the French Huguenot expeditions to 
Carolina and Florida. The first of these left France February 18, 
1562, under Jean Ribault, and after a voyage of two months made 
land at about 30° N. lat., in what is now the State of Florida. The 
explorers then turned north and after having some intercourse with 
the Indians at the mouth of the present St. Johns River, which they 
named the River May from the month in which it had been discovered, 
resumed their voyage northward along the coast. They observed 
the mouths of eight rivers, which they named in succession the Seine, 
Somnie, Loire, Charente, Garonne, Girondc, Belle, and Grande, and 
1 An ostado is 1.85 yards. 3 Oviedo, Hist. Gen., hi, pp. 630-631. 
2 In this case " principal" means great or large. * Ibid., p. 631. 
