632 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 187 



In 1701 Lawson came upon "a settlement of Santee Indians, there 

 being plantations lying scattering here and there, for a great many 

 miles." He found that the Congaree towns consisted of not "above a 

 dozen houses, they having other straggling plantations up and down 

 the country" (Lawson, 1860, pp. 37, 52). 



The town at Fort Christanna which was built b}^ the Tutelo, Saponi, 

 and their allies about 1714 and was therefore relatively late, is thus 

 described by Fontaine : 



It lieth in a plain by the riverside, the houses join all the one to the other, 

 and altogether make a circle . . . There are three ways for entering into this 

 town or circle of houses, which are passages of about six feet wide, between two 

 of the houses. All the doors are on the inside of the ring, and the ground is very 

 level withinside, which is in common between all the people to divert themselves. 

 There is in the centre of the circle a great stump of a tree ; I asked the reason 

 they left that standing, and they informed me it was for one of their head men 

 to stand upon when he had anything of consequence to relate to them, so that 

 being raised, he might the better be beard. (Maury, 1907, p. 276.) 



Florida towns having been mentioned, two short notices of these 

 towns are now in order. The first is Elvas' description of Ucita on 

 Tampa Bay already quoted in part : 



The town consisted of seven or eight houses. The chiefs house stood near the 

 beach on a very high hill which had been artificially built as a fortress. At the 

 other side of the town was the temple and on top of it a wooden bird with its eyes 

 gilded. (Robertson, 1933, p. 38.) 



In his description of a stockaded town Le Moyne says : 



The chief's dwelling stands in the middle of the town, and is partly under- 

 ground in consequence of the sun's heat. Around this are the houses of the prin- 

 cipal men, all lightly roofed with palm branches, as they are occupied only nine 

 months in the year ; the other three, as has been related, being spent in the woods. 

 (Le Moyne, 1875, p. 12; Swanton, 1922, pp. 352-353.) 



Capt. Sandford thus describes the town of the Edisto in the Cusabo 

 country which he visited in 1666 ; 



The Towne is scituate on the side or rather in the skirts of a faire forest in 

 w*"" at severall distances are diverse feilds of Maiz with many little houses 

 straglingly amongst them for the habitations of the particular families. On the 

 East side and part of the South It hath a large prospect over meadows very 

 spatious and delightful, before the Doore of their Statehouse is a spatious walke 

 rowed w*" trees on both sides tall & full branched, not much unlike to Elms w*"" 

 serves for the Exercise and recreation of the men [in the chunkey game]. (South 

 Carolina Hist. Soc. Colls., 1897, vol. 5, pp. 60-82; Swanton, 1922, p. &i.) 



He found the principal Indian town at Santa Elena (Port Koyal) 

 very much like it. 



In the De Soto narratives we get many important details regarding 

 Gulf towns but there are few attempts at description other than the 

 very brief one above given. It would seem, however, that they found 

 most of these grouped around a mound or mounds on which were the 



