590 BURElAU OF AMERICAN ETHN'OLOOY [Bull. 137 



pursued them toward the sea when they finally left that country 

 (Robertson, 1933, pp. 159, 276). 



San Miguel (1595) says that the Florida canoes were hollowed out 

 of "sauinas," which would indicate the red cedar, but he probably 

 means the cypress, as that was almost universally employed in the 

 section. It is interesting to find that although the earlier method 

 of manufacture was well known, he notes that the Indians around 

 St. Augustine already had iron from the Spaniards and that most 

 of the canoes he saw seemed to have been worked out by means of 

 it (Garcia, 1902, p. 206). 



Cushing's finds cast a great deal of light upon the types of canoes 

 used in Florida and their appurtenances. He discovered several toy 

 canoes shown to be such 



from the fact that some were not only well finished, but considerably worn by 

 use. There were six or seven of these, and while they generally conformed to 

 a single type, that is the dugout, they differed very materially in detail. Three 

 of them were comparatively flat-bottomed. One, about five inches in length by 

 two in breadth of beam and an inch in depth, was shaped precisely like a neat 

 punt or flat-bottomed row boat. . . . Both ends were somewhat squared, but the 

 stern was wider than the prow, and above the stern was a little protuberance, 

 indicating that such had been used in guiding, and perhaps as well in sculling, 

 little light draught vessels like this, obviously designed, my sailors thought, for 

 the navigation of shallow streams, inlets, bayous, and the canals. Another of 

 these flat-bottomed little toy boats was much sharper and higher at the stem 

 and stern, had very low gunwales, and was generally narrower in proportion to 

 its length, and enlarged would have been admirably adapted to swift tidal 

 currents, or to the running of low breakers. Yet another looked like a clumsy 

 craft for the bearing over shoals of heavy loads or burdens. It was compara- 

 tively wide, and its ends also quite broad. All except one of these, I observed, 

 were decorated at one end or both, with the same sort of semilunar or disc-like 

 devices, that were observable on the trays. . . . Two others of the toy canoes 

 . . . were not more than three inches broad by nearly two feet in length, grace- 

 fully and slenderly formed, tapered cleanly toward the forward ends, which were 

 high and very narrow, yet square at the sterns, which were also high. We found 

 them almost in juxtaposition near the midmost of the western benches. Little 

 sticks and slight shreds of twisted bark were lying across them and indicated 

 to me that they had once been lashed together, and, as a more finished and 

 broken spar-like shaft lay near by, I was inclined to believe that they represented 

 the sea-going craft of the ancient people here; that the vessels in which these 

 people had navigated the high seas had been made double — of canoes lashed to- 

 gether, catamaran fashion — and propelled not only with paddles, but also, per- 

 haps, by means of sails, made probably from the thin two-ply kind of bark matting 

 I have before described, of which there were abundant traces near the mid- 

 channel, associated with cordage and with a beautifully regular, much worn 

 and polished spar. At any rate, the natives of these South Florida seas and 

 of the West Indies are mentioned by early writers as having navigated fearlessly 

 in their cypress canoes ; as having sometimes crossed the Gulf itself, and as having 

 used in these long cruises sails of some simple sort. (Gushing, 1896, pp. 364-365.) 



Gushing then cites Dickenson's description of the return to his home 

 of the Ais chief seated on a platform constructed between two canoes. 



