MACCAULEY.] INDUSTRIES. 513 
his ramrod among the birds and killed one. He appeared to regard 
this feat as neither accidental por remarkable. 
I sought to discover how many deer the Seminole annually kill, but 
could get no number which I ean call trustworthy. I venture twenty- 
five hundred as somewhere near a correct estimate. 
Otter hunting is another of the Seminole industries. This animal has 
been pursued with the rifle and with the bow and arrow. Lately the 
Indians have heard of the trap. When we left Horse Creek. a request 
was made by one of them to our guide to purchase for him six otter 
traps for use in the Cat Fish Lake camp. 
FISHING. 
Fishing is also a profitable industry. For this the hook and line are 
often used; some also use the spoon hook. Butitis a common practice 
among them to kill the fish with bow and arrow, and in this they are 
quite skillful. One morning some boys brought me a bass, weighing 
perhaps six pounds, which one of them had shot with an arrow. 
STOCK RAISING. 
Stock raising, in a small way, may be called a Seminole industry. 
I found that at least fifty cattle, and probably more, are owned by 
members of the tribe and that the Seminole probably possess a thousand 
swine and five hundred chickens. The latter are of an excellent breed. 
At Cat Fish Lake an unusual interest in horses seems now to be deyel- 
oping. I found there twenty horses. I was told that there are twelve 
horses at Fish Eating Creek, and I judge that between thirty-five and 
forty of these animals are now in possession of the tribe. 
KOONTI. 
The unique industry, in the more limited sense of the word, of the 
Seminole is the making of the Koonti flour. Koonti is a root contain- 
ing a large percentage of starch. It is said to yield a starch equal to 
that of the best Bermuda arrowroot. White men eall it the “ Indian 
bread root,” and lately its worth as an article of commerce has been 
recognized by the whites. There are now at least two factories in oper- 
ation in Southern Florida in which the Koonti is made into a flour for 
the white man’s market. I was at one such factory at Miami and saw 
another near Orlando. I ate of a Koonti pudding at Miami, and can 
say that, as it was there prepared and served with milk and guava 
jelly, it was delicious. As might be supposed, the Koonti industry, as 
carried on by the whites, produces a far finer flour than that which 
the Indians mannfacture. The Indian process, as I watched it at Horse 
Creek, was this: The roots were gathered, the earth was washed from 
them, and they were laid in heaps near the “ Koonti log.” 
The Koonti log, so called, was the trunk of a large pine tree, in which 
a number of holes, about nine inches square at the top, their sides 
5 EBTH—33 
