

290 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

[AuG. 24, 1907. 

tunity, and to-day, so far as I know, there is 
no other city at all like it. On leaving it you 
look back with regret as it fades away in the 
distance and you come to the wooded shore on 
the other side of the river, as the skilled skipper 
studies out the channel from the lay of the shore 
and the looks of the water. The settlers along 
the shore have each their own wharf, for this 
river is the 
common highway for all the 
dwellers along its shores. If you are forced by 
some sudden squall to come to anchor there need 
be no fear, for the waters are shallow and the 
waves will not rise high enough to be danger- 
ous. At the most you will only get a drench- 
ing, and when the sun comes out, in an hour the 
passing discomfort is forgotten. 
All the way to New Smyrma you sail among 
the little islands winding in and out, passing the 
mouth of Turnbull Bay, and by the resort by 
the sea, known as Ponce Park, close by the 
Mosquito Inlet Light. Passing the mouth of 
the inlet a few miles brings you to New Smyrma, 
to good hotels if you go ashore, to safe harbor 
You can fish if you like 
or hunt if you like, or idle in the shade think- 
ing of nothing if you like. 
if you stay on board. 
New Smyrma shares 
in the early as well as the later history of 
Florida, for here Turnbull brought his colony, 
whose members were gathered all along the 
shores of the Mediterranean, and were here set 
to work on the sugar and indigo plantations, to 
escape later from his and to find 
refuge at St. Augustine. Here are stil] the ruins 
of his mills In this harbor 
the Civil War many a blockade runner 
found refuge, and here a schooner loaded with 
turpentine was burned lest it should fall in the 
hands of the Union fleet lying off the bar. It 
is certain now that this whole waterway, coo! 
in summer and warm in winter, must win more 
oppression 
and his defenses. 
during 
and more in favor as the years go on with all 
those who are really in love with nature and her 
ways. 

Indian Words in Common Use. 

Plants and Foods. 
(Cont nued from page 252.) 
HickKory.—The common word hickory appears 
in the books in a dozen or fifteen forms, of which 
the one just given is the commonest, but it was 
also spelled 
Earlier 
“hickery,” “hiquery,” 
were “pokikerie,” 
“hiccora.” 
“pokahickory,” 
Originally it meant a milk or 
paste made by pounding the nuts of the hickory 
tree (Carya tomentosa), which mixture was used 
to flavor soups and_ boiled vegetables. The 
name afterwards applied by the set- 
tlers to the nut itself and to the tree and its 
wood. Smith described the method of making 
the preparation, telling how the Indians dried 
the nuts and afterwards pounded them very 
small so that the shells might be separated from 
the substance of the meat. “After this has been 
done,” he “this water will be colored as 
milk, which they cal pawcohicorra, and keepe 
it for their vse.” A later writer speaks of the 
a kind of “mylke” or 
liquor” which they call powcohiccora. 
It was to be expected that the Indian word 
in its transfer to the English language should 
lose some of its syllables, and so we have the 
hickory of to-day. As already suggested, the 
term is widely applied to any wood that pos- 
sesses toughness and spring, and in this sense 
forms 
“pawcohiccora.” 
was 
Says, 
preparation as “oylie 

it has reached even to the antipodes. As an ad- 
jective it is applied to many plants and some 
animals. The strict meaning of the word is “‘it 
is pounded.” 
PERSIMMON is another protean word. When 
ripe, after the frost has touched the fruit, it is 
so desirable that it forms the basis of not a few 
southern as “the longest pole knocks 
down the persimmons.” “To rake in the per- 
simmons” means to gather in the stakes in gamb- 
ling, “A the persimmon” 
means excellent. 
The persimmon, a fruit unknown to north- 
erners, looks like a yellow plum. It is extremely 
astringent before ripening, but after being 
touched by the frost it is sweet and delicious. 
The fruit clings to the branches after the leaves 
have fallen and when it drops to the ground is 
eagerly sought for. The southern Indians dried 
it and preserved the dried fruit for winter use. 
The Indian word is very similar in pronuncia- 
pasimen, meaning dried 
Here will be noticed the 
in the remarks on the 
sayings, 
huckleberry above 

tion to our being 
fruit or dried berries. 
final “men” alluded to 
word chincapin. 
Poke.—This is a common abbreviation for the 
well known plant (Phytolacca decandra), more 
commonly known as poke berry, poke weed and 
poke root. Its dark berries are full of a red 
juice often expressed by children for the purpose 
of making red ink. The Indians used this juice 
as a stain for mats and baskets, but the color 
soon fades or may be washed out. The word 
comes from an Indian term pokan used for the 
plant and derived from a root meaning blood. 
Puccoon.—Derived from the same Indian word 
as poke is puccoon, another plant (Lithospermum 
vulgare), the root of which was used as a paint 
for the body, and also for skin garments. 
The root was powdered and mixed with grease 
or oil. It was also used in medicine and was 
highly esteemed, so much so that it was often 
offered in sacrifice, like tobacco, beads and 
pieces of copper. The blood root (Sanguinaria) 
was called red puccoon and another plant 
(Hydrastis) yellow puccoon. 
Hominy.—Here is another word familiar over 
much of the country, but especially so to south- 
erners. It is the name originally given to In- 
dian corn, pounded in a mortar, freed from the 
hulls by winnowing and then boiled. At differ- 
ent points along the Atlantic coast it had dif- 
ferent names, and at present it is manufactured 
in many There were and are hominy, 
hominy grits, lye hominy, samp and other forms. 
The food was early valued by the settlers and 
is spoken of by Smith in his ‘True Travels.” 
The term is formed by the last syllables of a 
Algonquin word meaning “crushed by 
” 
ways. 
long 
pounding. 
TucKAHOE.—A name applied to several roots 
or root-like objects used by the Indians for food. 
One of these was the ground nut or wild potato 
(Apios). Another was a large root mass some- 
times found in old fields to the south. Another 
is the root stalk of the arrow weed (Peltandra 
alba) and the root of another plant. The term 
comes from an Algonquin word tukweo, mean- 
ing “it is round.” 
Made ef Leather. 
Two other words, which have reached our 
tongue through the French, and whose origin 
has puzzled etymologists, are given below. 
APISHAMORE is one—a familiar northwest plains 

term. This is defined by Bartlett in his Dic- 
tionary of Americanisms, as a saddle blanket 
made of buffalo calf skins; but this is only a 
part of the meaning. The term in early days 
was commonly applied to any saddle blanket, 
but it really meant a saddle blanket made of a 
piece of dressed buffalo hide, on which the hair 
had been left, and back of that it meant a piece 
of dressed buffalo hide less in size than a robe. 
It was applied not only to a saddle blanket of 
buffalo hide, but also to a piece of buffalo hide 
spread on the ground or on a bed frame to sleep 
on. Such a bed piece might be six or eight feet 
long and four feet wide. The derivation is 
clearly from the word apishimon, which in the 
Ojibway means something to lie upon. 
BaBICHE is the second of these words, French 
in form and coming to us from the French. It 
means a thong of skin, usually of undressed 
skin, or rawhide. Babiche forms the netting of 
snowshoes and of lacrosse sticks. The word 
was first used long ago in the seventeenth cen- 
tury and comes from one of the eastern Algon- 
quin languages, very likely from the Micmac 
word ababich, which means cord or thread, in 
other words, string. 
SHAGANNAPI, a northwest term for rawhide 
thongs, which in the northern buffalo country 
served the purpose of ropes. Such thongs were 
used in the manufacture of the Red River carts, 
for binding together, and so mending, broken 
utensils of wood as saddles, carts and wagons 
and as harness for carts and dog sledges. The 
word is derived from the Cree bishaganapi, which 
means “cut in a circular manner,” referring to 
the old way of cutting a rawhide so as to get 
the longest possible line from it; that is, begin- 
ning at an edge and cutting constantly around 
the outside until the center is reached and the 
whole hide is used up. For certain uses a beef 
rawhide is still cut in this way by some of the 
plains Indians. As an English word, the term 
is passing out of use and will soon be found 
only in the dictionaries. 
Moccasin.—Spelled in half a dozen different 
ways this comes to us from the Algonquin In- 
dians whose different tribes all had a word 
closely resembling this; makasin meaning foot 
covering or shoe. The old northwest trappers and 
Canadian French usually called moccasins skin- 
shoes—or shoes made out of skin or hide. The 
moccasin of the woodland Indian of the east was 
commonly made of a single piece of tanned deer 
skin and was without a sole, in that respect dif- 
fering widely from the moccasin of the plains 
tribes, all of which were provided with parfleche 
or rawhide soles. So nearly as we can gather 
from the descriptions and pictures that we have 
of them they differed little, if at all, from the 
moccasin worn by the mountain Indians of the 
west. We may imagine that moccasins were 
worn chiefly in winter, and that for the coldest 
weather they were formed of dressed deer hide 
on which the hair had been left, the hair being 
on the inside of the shoe. Such winter moc- 
casins would be paralleled by the buffalo moc- 
casin of very much later times. Often, no doubt, 
in winter ordinary moccasins were partly filled 
with the hair of a deer or with dried grass or 
leaves in order to keep the feet warm. No doubt 
also when the warrior of the Atlantic coasts 
started on the war path he carried with him 
many extra pairs of moccasins and in them trans- 
ported food for his journey. 
[TO BE CONCLUDED. ] 

















































