SWANTON] INlDIAN'S OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 313 



ours onely in this, their tailes are longer and the snags of their homes looke 

 backward. (Hariot, 1893, p. 29.) 



Stracliey speaks of them thus: 



They have divers beasts fitt for provision; the chief are deare, both redd 

 and fallow ; great store in the country towards the heads of the rivers, though 

 not so many amongst the rivers. In our island, about James Towne, are some 

 few nothing differing from ours in England, but that some of them the 

 antletts of their homes are not so manie. Our people have seen two hundred, 

 one hundred, and fifty in a herd. (Strachey, 1849, p. 122.) 



The -early white colonists were in the habit of employing Indians to 

 hunt for them and do other kinds of work. This is mentioned by 

 Lawson (1860, p. 146), and Samuel Wilson, writing of South Caro- 

 lina in 1682, tells us deer were so plentiful "that an Indian hunter 

 hath killed Nine fat Deere in a day all shot by himself, and all the 

 considerable Planters have an Indian Hunter which they hire for 

 less than Twenty shillings a year, and one hunter will very well find 

 a Family of Thirty people, with as much venison and foul as they 

 can well eat." (Carroll, 1836, vol. 2, p. 28.) 



Hunters either stalked the deer singly or killed them by means of 

 surrounds, devices which might be called respectively the cat and 

 dog methods of hunting. To start up all kinds of game they fired 

 the woods or canebrakes. 



Deer stalking is described by our authorities as observed among 

 the Powhatan Indians, the Siouan tribes, the Chickasaw and Choc- 

 taw, the Timucua, and the Natchez. The Timucua account, given 

 by Le Moyne in connection with one of his sketches, is the oldest of 

 these, dating from 1565: 



The Indians have a way of hunting deer which we never saw before. They 

 manage to put on the skins of the largest which have been taken, in such a 

 manner, with the heads on their own heads, so that they can see out through 

 the eyes as through a mask. Thus accoutered they can approach close to 

 the deer without frightening them. They take advantage of the time when 

 the animals come to drink at the river, and, having their bow and arrows all 

 ready, easily shoot them, as they are very plentiful in those regions. (Le 

 Moyne, 1875, p. 10 (illus.) ; Swanton, 1922, p. 357.) 



This differs from most other accounts in representing use of the 

 entire skin and in stating that the Indian clothed himself with it, 

 his head being inserted into the deer's head. Usually they employed 

 only the head, but, if we may trust Smith, the Virginia Indians did 

 make use of the entire skin : 



One Savage hunting alone, useth the skinne of a Deare slit on the one side, 

 and so put on his arme, through the neck, so that his hand comes to the head 

 which is stuffed, and the homes, head, eies, eares, and every part as arteflcially 

 counterfeited as they can devise. Thus shrowding his body in the skinne, by 

 stalking he approacheth the Deare, creeping on the ground from one tree to an- 

 other. If the Deare chance to find fault, or stande at gaze, hee turneth the head 



