SwANTON] INDIANS OP THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 285 



with them when they came from the north. They are said to have 

 tapped trees on a stream near Old Tellico and on Limestone Creek, 

 while Hawkins witnessed the process at a point near the present 

 Atlanta (Hawkins, 1916, p. 24). Mooney informed Mr. Henshaw, 

 it is true, that before they met Europeans, the Cherokee "extracted 

 their only saccharine from the pod of the honey locust, using the 

 powdered pods to sweeten parched corn and to make a sweet drink," 

 but if so they must have adopted the custom of extraction from the 

 sugar maple at an early period and there seems to be no reason why 

 they could not have done this before white contact as well as after it 

 (Henshaw, 1890, p. 349). 



The best accounts of Creek dietary are probably those of Romans 

 and Bartram, though the impressions of both were recorded rather 

 late in the eighteenth century, and Bartram's account is made to apply 

 equally to the Cherokee. Bomans (1775) says: 



Their way of life is in general very abundant; they have much more of 

 venison, bear, turkies ; and small game in their country than their neighbors 

 have, and they raise abundance of small cattle, hogs, turkeys, ducks and 

 dunghill fowls (all of which are very good in their kind) and of these they 

 spare not ; the labour of the field is all done by the women ; no savages are 

 more proud of being counted hunters, fishermen, and warriors ; were they to 

 cultivate their plentiful country, they might raise amazing quantities of grain 

 and pulse, as it is they have enough for their home consumption, they buy 

 a good deal of rice, and they are the only savages that ever I saw that could 

 bear to have some rum in store ; yet they drink to excess as well as others ; 

 there are few towns in this nation where there is not some savage residing, 

 who either trades of his own flock, or is employed as a factor. They have 

 more variety in their diet than other savages : They make pancakes ; they dry 

 the tongues of their venison; they make a caustick salt out of a kind of moss 

 found at the bottom of creeks and rivers, which although a vegetable salt, 

 does not deliquiate on exposing to the air; this they dissolve in water and 

 pound their dried venison till it looks like oakum and then eat it dipped in 

 the above sauce; they eat much roasted and boiled venison, a great deal of 

 milk and eggs; they dry peaches and persimmons, chestnuts and the fruit of 

 the chamaerops [Rhapidophyllum hystrix, the "blue palmetto" or "needle palm," 

 originally described as a chamaerops'], they also prepare a cake of the pulp 

 of the species of the passi flora, vulgarly called may apple; some kinds of 

 acorns they also prepare into good bread; the common esculent Convolvulus 

 [sweetpotato (Ipomoea latata)] and the sort found in the low woods [Ipo- 

 moea pandurata] , both called potatoes, are eat in abundance among them ; they 

 have plenty of the various species of Zea or maize, or the Phaseolus [beans] and 

 Dolichos [hyacinth beans], and of different kinds of Panicum; bears oyl, honey 

 and hickory milk are the boast of the country; they have also many kinds 

 of salt and fresh water turtle, and their eggs, and plenty of fish ; we likewise 

 find among them salted meats, corned venison in particular, which is very 

 fine; they cultivate abundance of melons; in a word, they have naturally the 

 greatest plenty imaginable; were they to cultivate the earth they would have 

 too much. (Romans, 1775, pp. 93-94.) 



Of course, this itinerary includes a great deal of European introduc- 

 tion and also there are some misstatements, as, for instance, that field 



