310 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



growth of their crops. Besides, they are so desirous of having multum in parvo, 

 without much sweating, that they plant the corn-hills so close, as to thereby 

 choak up the field. — They plant their corn in straight rows, putting five or six 

 grains into one hole, about two inches distance — They cover them with clay in 

 the form of a small hill. Each row is a yard asunder, and in the vacant ground 

 they plant pumpkins, water-melons, marsh-mallows, sun-flowers, and sundry 

 sorts of beans and peas, the last two of which yield a large increase. (Adair, 1775, 

 pp. 40e-408.) 



Du Pratz tells us that the Natchez prepared their fields for plant- 

 ing by means of a curved mattock made of hickory, but shoulder 

 blades of the bison were observed among the neighboring Bayogoula 

 employed for the same purpose, and no doubt the Natchez used them 

 also. These mattocks were used 



to weed the maize and cut down the canes in the preparation of a field. When 

 the canes were dry they set fire to them, and to sow the maize, they made a hole 

 with the hand in which they put some grains. These [hickory] mattocks were 

 made like a capital L. They cut by means of the sides of the lower end, which 

 is very flat. (La Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, pp. 26, 176; S wanton, 1911, p. 75.) 



Some time in 1699, the French chronicler, Penicaut, visited the town 

 of the Pascagoula Indians on the river which still bears their name 

 and makes the following observations regarding their farming: 



The next morning we went to walk in their fields where they sow their corn. 

 The women were there working with their men. The savages have fiat, bent 

 sticks, which they use to hoe the ground, for they do not know how to work it as 

 it is done in France. They scratch the soil with these crooked sticks and uproot 

 with them the canes and weeds which they leave on the earth in the sun during 

 fifteen days or a month. Then they set fire to them, and when they are reduced 

 to ashes they have a stick as large as the arm, pointed at one end, with which 

 they make holes in the earth 3 feet apart ; they put into each hole seven or eight 

 grains of corn and cover them with earth. It is thus that they sow their corn and 

 their beans. When the corn is a foot high they take great care, as in France, to 

 get rid of the weeds which get into it, and repeat it two or three times a year. 

 They make use even now of their wooden hoes, because they find them lighter, 

 although we have given them hoes of iron. (Penicaut, in Margry, 1883, vol. 5, 

 p. 304.) 



Farming among the Caddo has been described in Bulletin 132 of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology (S wanton, 1942, pp. 127-131). 



HUNTING 

 WOODCRAFT 



Indian woodcraft has always been proverbial, and, indeed, some- 

 thing of mystery has often been attached to it not warranted by the 

 facts, the skill of the Indians in this particular being a natural and 

 inevitable outgrowth of the necessities of their economic life. Catesby 

 has the following to say about this : 



When a body of Indians set out on an hunting journey of five hundred miles, 

 more or less, perhaps where none of them ever were; after the imaginary place 



