594 BUREAU OP AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 187 



but he adds that the commoner type accommodated only 10 to 20. 

 Barlowe also confines himself to the modest figure of 20, while Timber- 

 lake and Ribault, although one was writing of the Cherokee country 

 and the other of Florida, agree on 15 to 20. (Burrage, 1906, p. 233; 

 Timberlake, AVilliams ed., 1927, p. 85 ; French, 1875, p. 178 ; Swanton, 

 1922, p. 355.) At the Tamahita ( Yuchi) town on the upper Tennessee, 

 Gabriel Arthur saw 150 canoes, the least of which would carry 20 men. 

 He adds that they were "made sharp at both ends," which would indi- 

 cate that they were of a somewhat different type from the coast canoes 

 (Alvord, 1912, p. 213). On the Georgia coast, San Miguel's party 

 (in 1595) was accommodated with 2 canoes of 6 and 8 paddlers, 

 respectively, but their total capacity was greater. The south Florida 

 canoe which later came out to meet them had 16 paddlers, but this 

 canoe had been made "in the Spanish manner" (Garcia, 1902, pp. 198, 

 210). William Bartram speaks thus of the Seminole and Lower 

 Creek canoes : 



These Indians have large canoes, which they form out of the trunks of 

 cypress trees (Cupi'essm disticha)^ some of them commodious enough to accom- 

 modate twenty or thirty warriors. In these large canoes they descend the 

 river [Apalachicola] on trading and hunting expeditions to the sea coast, 

 neighboring islands and keys, quite to the point of Florida, and sometimes 

 across the gulph, extending their navigation to the Bahama islands and even 

 to Cuba: a crew of these adventurers had just arrived, having returned from 

 Cuba but a few days before our arrival, with a cargo of spirituous liquors, 

 Coffee, Sugar, and Tobacco. (Bartram, 1792, p. 225.) 



Du Pratz, as we have just noted, though he claims to have seen 

 some Mississippi Kiver canoes 40 feet long by 3 broad, places their 

 capacity at the modest figure of 12. Indeed, in one place he says 

 that they held only from 2 to 10, though he cites the case of a dugout 

 made by the French which carried 50 Negroes for 30 leagues, packed 

 rather closely (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 1, p. 107 ; vol. 2, pp. 188- 

 189; Swanton, 1911, p. 67). 



If we could be sure that the device of enlarging a canoe by splitting 

 it lengthwise and making an addition to the breadth of the bottom 

 was aboriginal, it would prove that some Gulf Indians had taken 

 the first step from a canoe to a boat. Just how the 80 to 100 barrels of 

 which Lawson (1860, p. 162) speaks in this connection compare with 

 human freight is a question I am not able to answer. 



The favorite material for canoes was cypress wherever suitable 

 timber of that kind was to be had. We are informed, however, that 

 the largest canoes on the low er Mississippi were of poplar, which was 

 also employed sometimes by the Cherokee ; that those of the Quapaw 

 were of black walnut; and Adair mentions the "light poplar canoes 

 of the Indians of Koosah town," the most ancient Creek town in the 

 Talladega country, and on Coosa Kiver. (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, 



