PORTER^S JOURNAL, 



117 



will save their hogs for years in order to make their feast 

 abundant, in which consists its chief splendour. 



I gave Gattanewa some hogs of an English breed, and 

 requested him not to kill any until they had become nume- 

 rous. He told me he would not ; that he intended to have 

 a feast for his mother, and that he should not give it until he 

 had an hundred English hogs, when he should kill the 

 whole of them. When a marriage takes place, they also 

 have a feast, and in this consists the whole ceremony. The 

 union is not binding, and the parties are at liberty to sepa- 

 rate when they no longer like each other, provided they 

 have had no children. The girls are seldom married be- 

 fore they are nineteen or twenty years of age, and their 

 licentious life prevents them from having children before 

 that period ; they therefore preserve their beauty to an. 

 advanced age. Before marriage they are at liberty to in- 

 dulge themselves with whom they please, but after mar- 

 riage the right of disposing of them remains with the hus- 

 band. The women, different from those of almost every 

 other Indian nation, are not subjected to any laborious 

 work. Their occupations are wholly domestic ; to them 

 belongs the manufacturing of cloth, the care of the house 

 and children. The men cultivate the ground, catch fish, 

 build canoes and houses, and protect their families ; they 

 are all artificers, and as they have but few wants, they are 

 perfect in the knowledge necessary to supply them» To 

 be sure there are certain professional trades, which they 

 are not all so perfect in, such as tattooing, and the manufac- 

 turing of ornaments for the ears ; for those objects there 

 are men who devote their whole attention to render them- 

 selves perfect. There are also professed barbers, and 

 their doctors are, in some measure, professional men. 

 Their furniture consists of mats of a superior workman- 

 ship, calabashes, baskets, kava cups, formed of the cocoa- 

 nut, and cradles for their children, hollowed out of a log, 

 and made with great neatness, some small chests, also hol- 

 lowed out of a sohd piece, with covers to them, wooden 

 bowls and stands, calculated to hang different objects on, 

 so contrived that the rats cannot get on them. Their 

 plumes and other articles of value, which would otherwise 

 be injured by the rats, are suspended in baskets from the 

 roofs of their houses, by lines passing through the bottom 



