268 BURElAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOlLOGY [Bull. 137 



one that possesses the combination of scaly body, teeth in the jaws, and size, 

 referred to in the notice. (Smith, B., 1857, pp. 223-224.) 



There is also a reference to honey which has created considerable 

 discussion, since honeybees were unknown in that part of America 

 north of Mexico until they were introduced by the whites. Elvas 

 represents this as one of the articles of food obtained at Chiaha near 

 the present Chattanooga. He says: 



There was also found considerable walnut oil . . . and a pot of bee's honey ; 

 which before or after was not seen in all the land — neither honey nor bees, 

 (Robertson, 1933, vol. 1, p. 74.) 



Probably this experience was the same as one related by Ranjel, 

 though the latter places the event at Coste, farther down the Ten- 

 nessee River. 



There in Coste they found in the trunk of a tree as good honey and even 

 better than could be had in Spain. (Robertson, 1933, vol. 2, p. 110.) 



It must be added that "honey" is mentioned by Laudonniere in 

 1564r-65 as one of the articles of food which the Indians of Florida 

 carried with them when they traveled some distance from home, but 

 in this case mil, "millet" (intended to designate "corn"), has been 

 misread "miel," for dried cornmeal was the staple provision of a war- 

 rior (Laudonniere, 1586, p. 9). 



At Cofitachequi on Savannah River the Spaniards were treated 

 to an abundance of salt ; in what is now central Alabama and north- 

 ern Mississippi they were taught by the Indians to burn a certain 

 herb and mix the ashes in their food as a salt substitute; and west 

 of the Mississippi River, in southern Arkansas and northern Louisi- 

 ana, they found salt springs and salt as a staple article of trade. At 

 some of these springs they made salt for themselves. (Bourne, 1904, 

 vol. 2, pp. 99, 147, 148; vol. 1, p. 136; Garcilaso, 1723, pp. 175-176, 

 182, 189.) 



So far as they can be identified, all of these foods are such as were 

 found in use by the later comers of Spanish, English, or French 

 extraction, except the honey, and real honeybees were soon introduced 

 by the whites themselves. 



Omitting, for the present, consideration of the foods reported in 

 use in Florida in 1564-65 when the French and Spaniards settled 

 there, we will turn to an excellent description by Thomas Hariot 

 of the dietary of the Algonquian tribes in the Sound region of North 

 Carolina, where the Raleigh Colony was settled in 1585-87 : 



There are three sorts [of corn], of which two are ripe in an eleuen and 

 twelue weekes at the most: sometimes in ten, after the time they are set, 

 and are then of height in stalke about sixe or seuen foote. The other sort 

 is ripe in fourteene, and is about ten foote high, of the stalkes some beare 

 foure heads, some three, some one, and two; euery head containing fine, sixe, 

 or seuen hundred graines within a fewe more or lesse. (Hariot, 1893, p. 22.) 



