swantwM EAKLY HISTORY OF THE CEEBK INDIANS 393 
down in. 1 On certain occasions, especially when large burdens were 
to be carried, two canoes were lashed side by side but some distance 
apart, poles were laid across to make a platform, and mats were 
placed on top of this. 2 
Tobacco w as \ cry much valued by these people, but apparently not 
cultivated by them. "A leaf, or a half a leaf of tobacco, would pur- 
chase a yard of linen or woolen, or silk, from the Indians." Ambergris, 
found along their coast, was so little esteemed that an Indian of Ais, 
''having a considerable quantity of ambergris, boasted that when he 
went for Si. Augustine with that he could purchase of the Spaniards 
a looking glass, an axe, a knife or two, and three or four mannocoes, 
which is about five or six pounds of tobacco; the quantity of amber- 
gris might be about five pounds weight." 3 
The little that we learn regarding the private life of these people, 
their manners and customs, does not set them forth in a very engaging 
light. That they should plunder the white people of their posses- 
sions was to have been expected, and the latter were lucky to have 
escaped w r ith their lives, but their treatment of them in small matters 
shows them to have been deceitful, overbearing, unfeeling, and cow- 
ardly. They mocked and insulted them in every manner, and upon 
one occasion an Indian filled the mouth of Dickenson's infant son with 
sand. They made fun of two of the English who w r ere seized w r ith 
fever and ague, and Dickenson goes on to remark that they treated 
their own unfortunates as badly. 
This we well observed, that these people had no compassion on their own aged 
declining people when they were past labour, nor on others of their own which lay 
under any declining condition; for the younger is served before the elder, and the 
elder people, both men and women, are slaves to the younger. 4 
This, it is to be observed, is sharply at variance with the treat- 
ment of their old men by the Creeks. Nevertheless the English did 
not want for some defenders and protectors in each town, and when 
there was more than enough food for the Indians they had plenty. 
As an example of primitive generosity in supplying at least the 
essentials of existence to all may be cited one occasion at Ais when a 
canoe laden with fish came in, "and it was free for those that would, 
to take as much as they pleased. The Indians put us to go and take, 
for it was a kind of scramble amongst us and the young Indian men 
and boys. All of us got fish enough to serve us two or three days." 5 
In spite of the extreme primitiveness and simplicity of their culture 
the town chief w T as treated w r ith considerable respect and seems to 
have exerted very great influence. His house is represented as the 
largest in the tow r n, and seems to have supplied the place of the public 
' Dickenson, Narrative, p. 17. * Ibid., p. 55. 
•Ibid., p. 48. 'Ibid., p. 56 
> Ibid., p. 60. 
