SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 409 



as though they had rested upon, but had not been driven into, the solid shell and 

 clay-marl benches. They had apparently, on the contrary, been quite rigidly 

 fastened to the horizontal timbers or frameworks of the quays or scaffolds 

 they held up — by means of the stay-sticks — like pegs or pointed feet, so that 

 as long as the water remained low, they would support these house scaffolds 

 above it, as well as if driven into the benches, but when the waters rose, the 

 entire structure would also slightly rise, or at any rate not be violently wrenched 

 from their supports, as would inevitably have been the case had these been 

 firmly fixed below. The longer piles were, on the contrary, round. They were 

 somewhat smaller, quite smoothly finished, and had been, if one might judge 

 by their more pointed and yet roughened or frayed appearance at both ends, 

 actually driven into the bottom. It therefore appeared to me that they had 

 been made so as to be thus driven into the edges of the benches at either side 

 of the peg-supported platforms, in order to keep these from swerving in case 

 an unusual rise in the waters caused them to float. There were other pieces 

 equally long, but broken off near their points. They were slightly grooved at 

 the upper ends and tied around with thick, well-twisted ropes or cables made of 

 cypress bark and palmetto fibre, as though they had served as mooring-posts, 

 probably for the further securing of the ends of the partially movable platforms — 

 else they had not been so violently wrenched as to break them at the points — 

 for some of them were more than four inches in diameter, and were made of 

 tough mangrove and buttonwood or ironwood. The side-posts or stay-stakes 

 were, on the contrary, of spruce or pine, and were, as I have said, finished to a 

 nicety, as though to offer no resistance to the rise and fall of the big, partially 

 floating quays between them. Around the great log or sill of cypress, mentioned 

 as lying along the edge of the northern bench (it was uniformly nine Inches in 

 diameter, fourteen feet eleven inches in length, carefully shaved to shape and 

 finished evidently with shark-tooth blades and shell scrapers, and was moreover, 

 like the piles, socketed and notched or bored along its sides) were many of these 

 piles, both short and long; and overlying the sill, as well as on either side of 

 it, I found abundant broken timbers, poles, and traces of wattled cane matting as 

 well as quantities of interlaced or latticed saplings — laths evidently, for they 

 seemed to have been plastered with a clay and ash cement — and quantities also 

 of yellow marsh-grass thatch, some of it alluringly fresh, other portions burnt 

 to black masses of cinder. Here and elsewhere along the edges of the benches 

 occurred fire-hardened cement or mud hearth-plastering, mingled with ashes and 

 charcoal — which indeed occurred more or less abundantly everywhere, together 

 with refuse, consisting not only of broken and sometimes scorched animal bones 

 and shells, but also of the charred remains of vegetable and fruit foods. Among 

 these remains and the more artificial objects that were associated with them 

 we continually encountered incipient or unfinished pieces — blocked-out trays or 

 toy canoes, untrimmed adze and axe handles, uncompleted tablets, etc., and 

 all this evidenced to me that the place was indeed a site of former daily occu- 

 pation. (Gushing, 1896, pp. 362-363.) 



Keturning northward to the Siouan tribes of the Carolinas, we 

 have one very early note from Peter Martyr, who obtained his 

 information from a native: 



The natives have no temples, but use the dwellings of their sovereigns as 

 such. As a proof of this we have said that a gigantic sovereign called Datha 

 ruled in the province of Duhare, whose palace was built of stone, while all 

 the other houses were built of lumber covered with thatch of grasses. (Anghierra, 

 1912, vol. 2, pp. 260-262; Swanton, 1922, p. 43.) 



