BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
[bull. 73 
Regarding their economic life, the following statement will hold for 
all of these towns: 
These people neither sow nor plant any manner of thing whatsoever, nor care for 
any thing but what the barren sands produce. Fish they have as plenty as they 
please. 1 
The castaways thus describe one, and what appears to have been 
the most common, way of fishing: 
The Cassekey [of Hobe] sent his son with his striking staff to strike fish for us, which 
was performed with great dexterity; for some of us walked down with him, and 
though we looked very earnestly when he threw his staff from him, we could not see 
a fish at the time he saw it, and brought it to shore on the end of his staff. Sometimes 
he would run swiftly pursuing a fish, and seldom missed when he darted at it; in two 
hours time he got as many fish as would serve twenty men. 2 
The striking staff or spear was the ordinary fishing implement; 
what purpose the bow and arrow served other than that of war is not 
apparent. One night, shortly after the fishing performance that has 
just been described, some Indians were seen fishing from a canoe 
by means of a torch. 3 The fish brought to the whites are said to 
have been "boiled with the scales, heads, and gills, and nothing 
taken from them but the guts." i At one place they were given 
oysters to eat and at another clams, and they were instructed 
how to roast them. 5 The vegetable food of the people of Ais con- 
sisted principally of "palm berries [species uncertain], coco-plums 
[Chrysobalanus icaco], and sea grapes [Coccoloba uvifera] . . . the 
time of these fruits bearing being over they have no other till the 
next spring." 6 The two latter suited the palates of the whites very 
well, but the palm berries they could not endure, and this is not 
surprising, since, according to Dickenson's testimony, they "could 
compare them to nothing else but rotten cheese steeped in tobacco 
juice." 7 They are spoken of in each of the principal towns which 
they visited, however, and were evidently a staple article of diet with 
the natives. The Indians provided water for the whites, and very 
likely for themselves, by scratching holes in the sand. 8 
These Indians occupied a thin strip of shore backed by swamps 
and dense undergrowth and do not seem to have ventured far inland. 
Their means of transportation and intercommunication were dugout 
canoes, used more often in the long narrow lagoons of that coast 
than on the open ocean, and often poled rather than paddled. 9 In- 
deed some of these were almost too small for outside work; the cast- 
aways were ferried across to Hobe in one just wide enough to sit 
1 Dickenson, Narrative, p. 51. 
2 Ibid., p. 19. 
a Ibid., p. 29. 
< Ibid., p. 36. 
* Ibid., pp. 23, 36. 
6 Ibid., p. 51. For the identifications I am in- 
debted to Lieut. W. E. Saflord, of the Bureau of 
Plant Industry, U. S Department of Agriculture. 
» Ibid., pp. 37-38. 
8 Ibid., p. 17. 
» Ibid., p. 48. 
