356 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [boll. 73 
burdens. 1 The chiefs, chiefs' wives, and other principal persons 
were, on occasions of state, carried in litters, borne on the shoulders 
of several men. All early Spanish travelers among the southern 
Indians speak of these, and Le Moyne illustrates one in which a 
woman is being borne on the shoulders of four men. 2 She is 
placed on a raised seat covered with a decorated skin, and protected 
from the sun by a structure of green boughs. Each of the bearers 
carries a crotched stick in one hand. The opposite end of each of 
these was stuck into the ground when they made a halt and 
the handles of the litter were allowed to rest in the crotches. 
Before march two men blowing on flutes, and at the sides are two 
others with large feather fans on the ends of long poles. Some of 
these features, especially the last, seem suspiciously European, but 
the use of flutes before such personages is well attested. Feather 
fans were also employed throughout the southern area; it is rather the 
type of fan shown here that is doubtful. 
Other animals besides the dog were perhaps reared from time to 
time, as one of Laudonniere's lieutenants was presented with two 
young eagles by a chief who had bred them in his house. 3 The 
statement in De Soto's letter regarding domestication of turkeys and 
deer is evidently a mistake. 4 Ribault says that the tools with which 
they made their "spades and mattocks," their bows and arrows, and 
short lances, and with which they "cut and polished all sorts of 
wood that they employed about their buildings," were "certain 
stones, oyster shells, and mussels." 5 
They lived partly upon the natural products of the earth, but 
depended principally upon the chase, fishing, and agriculture. 
Laudonniere says: 
They make the string of their bow of the gut of the stag, or of a stag's skin, which 
they know how to dress as well as any man in France, and with as different sorts of 
colors. They head their arrows with the teeth of fishes, which they work very finely 
and handsomely. 6 
Ribault states that the shafts of their arrows were of reed. 7 Spark 
is considerably more detailed: 
In their warres they vse bowes and arrowes, whereof their bowes are made of a 
kind of Yew, but blacker than ours, and for the most part passing the strength of the 
Negros or Indians, for it is "not greatly inferior to ours: their arrowes are also of a great 
length, but yet of reeds like other Indians, but varying in two points, both in length 
and also for nocks and feathers, which the other lacke, whereby they shoot very 
» See p. 373. 
s Le Moyne, Narrative, pi. 37. 
» Laudonniere, La Floride, p. 75; French, Hist. Colls. La., 1875, p. 230. 
* Bourne, Narr. ofDe Soto, n, p. 162. 
<• French, op. cit., p. 174. 
6 Laudonniere, op. cit., p. 7; French, Hist. Colls. La., 1869, pp. 170-171. 
' French, Hist. Colls. La., 1875, p. 174. 
