AND MANUFACTURES. 259 
but they are the only slaveholders of the fron- 
tier tribes, except very few among the Shaw- 
nees. 
With some tribes, and particularly among 
the lower classes of the Creeks, they are in- 
clined to settle in ‘towns,’ as they call them, 
—making large fields, which are cultivated in 
common, and the produce proportionally dis- 
tributed. But these ‘towns’ are rather settle- 
ments than villages, being but sparse clusters 
of huts without any regularity. Indeed, there 
is not, [ believe, a regularly laid out town in 
all the Indian country, nor a place that could 
even merit the name of a village; except 
Doaksville near Fort Towson, and perhaps 
Park Hill in the Cherokee Nation. 
Besides agriculture, most of the frontier 
tribes attend a little to manufactures, though 
with no greater energy. The women have 
generally learned to spin, weave and sew, at 
which they occupy themselves, occasionally, 
during recess from the labors of the field. 
But very few of the men acquire mechanical 
arts or follow trades of any kind: their car- 
penter, wheelwright and smith work is done 
by a few mechanics provided the several tribes 
in accordance with treaty stipulations. To 
each tribe is furnished in particular one or 
more blacksmiths from the United States. 
These frontier Indians for the most part 
live in cabins of logs, like those of our back- 
woods settlers; and many of them are undis- 
tinguishable, except in color, language, and to 
some degree in costume, from the poorer 
