SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SiOUTHE ASTERN UNITED STATES 305 



Byrd, indeed, intimates that the Indians of Virginia were in the 

 habit of cutting down trees to get the nuts from them (Bassett, 1901, 

 p. 302), but, in view of the labor necessarily entailed by pre-Colum- 

 bian methods, it is evident that this can hardly have been common 

 before the introduction of European axes, and in fact it sounds more 

 like a jest than the sober statement of a fact. 



The Barbados men who explored Cape Fear River "saw several 

 plots of ground cleared by the Indians after their weak manner, 

 compassed round with great timber trees, which they are no wise 

 able to fell, and so keep the sun from corn-fields very much; yet, 

 nevertheless, we saw as large corn-stalks, or larger, than we have seen 

 anywhere else" (Lawson, 1860, p. 121). 



Before the Spaniards came, the ancient inhabitants of southern 

 Florida do not appear to have cultivated the ground, but their 

 Seminole successors brought the industry with them, though it took 

 on a particular pattern owing to the nature of the Everglade country. 

 The villages are on hammocks, but 



usually the home hammock is not big enough to accommodate both village 

 and cornfield, hence the crops must be produced on some other island, often a 

 day's journey or more distant. The method of cultivation followed is primitive. 

 Thfe trees are killed by girdling, so that the sun shines through when the 

 leaves have fallen. Then the ground is broken with a hoe and the crops 

 planted. These are casually tended from time to time thereafter. (Skinner, 

 1913, p. 76.) 



The above is from notes made by Alanson Skinner in 1910. Thirty 

 years earlier, MacCauley observed: 



The ground they select is generally in the interiors of the rich hammocks 

 whicli abound in the swamps and prairies of Southern Florida. There, with a 

 soil unsurpassed in fertility and needing only to be cleared of trees, vines, 

 underbrush, &c., one has but to plant corn, sweet potatoes, melons, or any 

 thing else suited to the climate, and keep weeds from the growing vegetation, 

 that he may gather a manifold return. The soil is wholly without gravel, 

 stones, or rocks. It is soft, black, and very fertile. (MacCauley, 1887, p. 510.) 



We have few detailed descriptions of the method of cultivating 

 the ground, the principal ones being by Hariot, Spelman, Smith, and 

 Strachey (these last two writers evidently using the same material), 

 Le Moyne, Adair, and Du Pratz, representing the Algonquians of 

 North Carolina and Virginia, the Timucua, the Chickasaw, and the 

 Natchez, but notes from other tribes indicate a general uniformity 

 throughout the region. 



After describing the plants cultivated on the North Carolina 

 coast — corn, beans, peas, pumpkins, squashes, gourds, sunflowers, and 

 an "orage" — Hariot continues : 



All the aforesaide commodities for victuall are set or sowed, sometimes in 

 groundes apart and seuerally by themselues; but for the most part together in 



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