moon1:y] SAPONI AND TUTELO CUSTOMS. 47 



evidently also of the Saponi language, are maosti, " turkey-cock beard," 

 and cohanl-.s, "wild goose," the latter being an ononiatope (Byrd, 10). 

 In the journal of the same expedition, as printed in the North Carolina 

 Colonial Records, the names sometimes appear in slightly dift'erent form 

 through misprints or carelessness in the original writing (N. C. 11., 5). 



From Byrd and his Saponi informant several little points in regard 

 to Indian habit and belief are obtained. Although not always defi- 

 nitely so stated, the references are usually intended to apply to the 

 Saponi and their associated tribes, the Tutelo, Occaneechi, and others 

 at Fort Christanna. 



Fire was made by rubbing together two dry sticks of papaw wood, 

 the process requiring about ten minutes. On the occasion of any 

 religious ceremony new fire was always made for the purpose from two 

 sticks which had never before been used, as it was deemed a sacrilege 

 to use the fire already kindled. From the fiber of a kind of " silk grass" 

 the women made a strong thread from which they wove baskets and 

 the aprons Avhich formed the chief part of the woman's dress. These 

 aprons or skirts were wrapped round the body and hung from the waist 

 to the knee, bordered with a fringe at the bottom. Spoons were made 

 of buffalo horn, and the Indians believed that thes3 spoons would split 

 and fall to pieces if poison were put into them. Skins were dressed with 

 deer's brains, a method which the English learned to pattern, and the 

 skin was sometimes stretched over a smoke to dry it more speedily. 

 They annointed their bodies with bear's grease as a protection against 

 mosquitos and all other insects. A diet of bear's meat was supposed to 

 increase the generative power. Ifwas believed that venison and turkey 

 (i. 6., the flesh of birds and of quadrupeds) must never be cooked 

 together, on penalty of provoking the anger of the hunting gods, who 

 would drive the game away so that the olTending hunter would 

 never be able to kill anything afterward. When the party laughed at 

 Bearskin's fears on this score and deliberately violated the tabu to 

 convince him that he was in error, he took the precaution afterward 

 when he had shot a buck and a wild turkey together, of leaving the 

 turkey behind and bringing only the deer into camp, in order to put 

 such a sacrilege out of their power. They justified their laying of the 

 heavier burdens on the weaker sex by a tradition that work had orig- 

 inally come upon the human race through some fault of the woman 

 (Byrd, 9). 



The general statement of the Saponi belief in regard to the spirit 

 world, as obtained from Bearskin in a Sunday night talk around the 

 fire, is best told in the language of Byrd himself, always making lib- 

 eral allowance for the preconceived notions of a white mau who did not 

 claim to be an ethnologist. The transmigration idea here set forth 

 agrees with what Lederer says of the same people: 



In the evening wo examiu'd our Mend Bearskin, concernin<; the religion of his 

 country, and he cxplaiu'd it to us. without any of that reserve to which his nation 

 }B subject, He told us he boliev'd there was one supreme Ood, who had several sub- 



