394 
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
[bull. 73 
houses of the Timucua and Creeks, with which it may indeed have 
been identical, since the chief among the Creeks was at the same time 
guardian of the town house. The house of the Santa Lucia chief 
has already been described. His own seat is placed "at the upper 
end of the cabin " ; ! but from the context it is evident that the middle 
of the side farthest from the door is intended. The wording is in 
somewhat archaic English and by no means clear, but we must 
assume one of two arrangements as follows: 
Cabins or beds. C ^' S 
Benches for Benches for 
headmen. headmen. 
| Door. | 
Cabins or beds. C ^|t' S Cabins or beds. 
Is 
PS- 
Door. 
sa 
a! 
In the first plan it does not seem natural that the head men should 
sit on either side of the door, where in most tribes the slaves or in- 
ferior persons were placed; in the second it does not seem natural 
to break up the floor space, yet a similar order is met with in a 
Cusabo town (see p. 64), and was probably the correct one. Daily 
meetings were held here, in which the black drink was brewed and 
imbibed in quantities, the custom resembling closely in its observances 
that found among the Creeks. Dickenson describes it thus: 
The Indians were seated as aforesaid, the cassekey at the upper end of them, and 
the range of cabins was filled with men, women, and children, beholding us. At 
length we heard a woman or two cry, according to their manner, and that very sorrow- 
fully, one of which I took to be the cassekey 's wife; which occasioned some of us to 
think that something extraordinary was to be done to us; we also heard a strange sort 
of a noise, which was not like the noise made by a man, but we could not understand 
what, nor where it was; for sometimes it sounded to be in one part of the house, and 
sometimes in another, to which we had an ear. And indeed our ears and eyes could 
perceive or hear nothing but what was strange and dismal, and death seemed to sur- 
round us; but time discovered this noise to us. The occasion of it was thus: 
In one part of this house, where a fire was kept, was an Indian man, having a pot on 
the fire wherein he was making a drink of a shrub, which we understood afterwards 
1 Dickenson, Narrative, pp. 33-34. 
