SwA>fTON] mroiANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 329 



times and was known mainly to the tribes in the northern part of the 

 section. 



One would hardly expect to find any branch of the whaling industry 

 developed on the Florida coast, and the following mariner's tale by 

 Lawson is not calculated to strengthen one's convictions as to its 

 existence : 



Some Indians in America will go out to sea, and get upon a whale's back, and 

 peg or plug up his spouts, and so kill him. (Lawson, 1860, p. 252.) 



But listen to good Brother San Miguel, writing of his experiences 

 at St. Augustine in 1595 : 



In some places along this coast I saw great quantities of whale (ballenas) 

 vertebrae, which creatures the Indians kill: they told us that they kill them 

 with a stake and a mallet: that entire coast is of sand over which there is 

 little depth of water and everywhere many fish: for this reason there enter 

 upon it many whales to feed, and on seeing them the Indians go out in their 

 little canoes and the first who arrives jumps on top of it with the stake and 

 mallet in his hands, and although the whale wishes to dive very deep, it is not 

 able, and touching the bottom returns to the surface, and the Indian who is 

 alone upon it awaits his opportunity to drive the stake into his breathing-hole, 

 which he does shortly: and so the hunter leaves it and returns to shore where 

 the sea throws the animal suffocated to death, and there they cut it up and jerk 

 the meat for their sustenance, and the inlanders particularly enjoy it. (Garcia, 

 1902, p. 209.) 



With this story must be compared one told by Lopez de Velasco 

 regarding the hunting of manatee by the Tekesta Indians of southeast 

 Florida ; 



When [the hunter] discovers a sea cow he throws his rope around its neck, 

 and as the animal sinks under the water, the Indian drives a stake through 

 one of its nostrils, and no matter how much it may dive, the Indian never loses 

 it, because he goes upon its back. (Swanton, 1922, p. 389.) 



Commenting upon these tales, Dr. Remington Kellogg of the United 

 States National Museum writes me : 



It is barely possible that the . . . item [in] "Dos Antiguos Kelaciones de 

 la Florida" does relate to a kind of toothed whale. The blackfish, or pilot whale, 

 is fairly common in those waters. Curiously enough, schools of blackfish strand 

 rather frequently, or at least get into waters too shallow for swimming. In 

 the Orkney Islands, for instance, the natives actually drive them ashore or into 

 shallow water, and the early settlers along the New England coast employed 

 the same tactics. 



As Dr. Kellogg suggests, a similar method of hunting by Florida 

 Indians is perhaps indicated, but some features of it may have been 

 confounded with techniques employed in manatee hunting and cer- 

 tainly the story has not been allowed to suffer in retelling. 



Fire hunting was used for small game, generally including turkeys. 

 Speaking probably of the Siouan tribes of South Carolina, Lawson 

 (1860, p. 337) says, "all game, as turkies, ducks and small vermine, 



