1880.] [Gatschet. Either the Atlantic coast or the borders of the interior fresh-water lakes, or the Seminole settlements, Fla., might still harbor some of the race, though little hope is to be entertained that their ancient vocalic language may still be heard among them. ETHNOGRAPHIC REMARKS CONCERNING THE TIMUCUA PEOPLE. Not only for the history of the Floridians, but also for their ethnography the report of René de Laudonnière is of the greatest value. In the small extent of territory which he saw, the manners and customs were probably the same everywhere, on the coast and in the interior; but further to the west, among the Apalache, Hitchiti and Creeks, they must have differed not inconsiderably. The artist Jacques le Moyne de Morgues accompanied the captain on his expeditions inland, and with his skilful pencil reproduced most tastefully what he had observed among the red men of the plains and forests. These sketches do not seem to be historically faithful in every respect, for striking pictorial effect often seems more desir able to artists than historic truth; but taken as a whole, they give us a vivid picture of the reality of life among the Timucua. They were published in Theodor de Bry's collection of pictorial voyages, vol. II, with Latin text at the lower margin (Brevis Narratio; Francofurti ad Moenum, 1598, fol.). Alb. J. Pickett, History of Alabama, Charleston, 1851 (2 vols., 12mo.), has reproduced several of these drawings, together with extracts from De Laudonnière; but he wrongly supposes that LeMoyne's pictures represent the appearance and customs of the Southern Indians in general. Neither he nor Fairbanks, nor any other southern writer speaks of the Timucua as a distinct race. Condensed from De Laudonnière, Pareja and other sources, I present the following short sketch of what appeared to me the most characteristic of all the Timucua customs and peculiarities: Men and women generally went nude. Their bodies were well proportioned, the men were of a brown-olive color, tall stature and without apparent deformities. The majority of men tattooed themselves in very artistic devices on the arms and thighs, and to judge from Le Moyne's pictures, the chiefs at least were tattooed over the whole body. They trussed up their long black hair in a bunch resting on their head, and covered their privates with a well-dressed deerskin. Women wore the hair long, reaching down to the hips, but on losing their husbands they cut their hair off to its root, and did not remarry before it had grown again to reach the shoulders. Both sexes were in the habit of wearing their finger nails long. The custom of pressing the heads of infants is not mentioned.* *This custom prevailed largely among the Chá'hta, who were called Flatheads on that account. The German anatomist, A. Ecker, has lately examined twenty skulls excavated on the western coast of Florida, and published the result in the Brunswick " Archiv für Anthropologie,” vol. X (1878), page 201-14, under the heading: Zur Kenntniss des Körperbaues früherer Einwonner der Halbinsel Florida." He thinks that a portion of them was artificially altered and deformed, but that they belonged to a race similar or identical to that encountered by the first Spanish explorers; he further believes, that the people which accumulated the shell-heaps which are so frequent on the Floridian shore-line differed from the above, and perhaps belonged to the Carib stock. Gatschet.] [Feb, 20, Women were seen to climb the highest trees with agility, and to swim over broad rivers with children on their backs. When they became preg. nant, they (and the Creek women) kept away from their husbands, and during their periods were careful to eat certain kinds of nutriment only; they drank blood to render their sucking children stronger and healthier. Chiefs had one legitimate wife, whose children alone could inherit them, and one or two concubines. The first-born males in the tribe were sacrificed to the chief, under solemn ceremonies. Most Indians were found to be diseased by the "pox," for they were exceedingly fond of the other sex, calling their female friends “daughters of the sun." Pederasty was not unfrequent, and the French noticed quite a number of "hermaphrodites," who were very strong in body, and used as load-carriers, especially on war expeditions. The Indians showed a feeling of repugnance towards them. The Timucua declared war by sticking a number of arrows into the ground, fliers up, in close vicinity to the enemy's camp. This was done with the utmost secrecy the night before the attack, and locks of human hair were seen dangling from the end of the arrows. The chiefs led the warriors on the war-path, club, arrows and bow in hand; when the fight had begun, they placed themselves in the centre of the combatants, and their usual mode of attack was to surprise the enemy, as is done by all Indians. They fought valiantly and impetuously, when compelled to fight openly; their weapons were spears, clubs, bow and arrows, and a small target hung on the chest. Their arrows were headed with stones and fishbones, both being worked quite handsomely and carefully. The warriors put to death all men captured (though exceptions to this are recorded), cut off their arms above the elbow, and their legs above the knee, took their scalps, and ran an arrow into their anus, leaving them in this condition on the battle-field. The scalps and sometimes the cut-off limbs were brought to camp, stuck on poles which they connected with garlands, and during the scalp dance, which lasted three days and nights, the most revolting orgies were gone through. The oldest of their women were compelled to join hands in the maddening dance; the scalps of the slain were smoked over a fire, while praises were sung to the sun for the victory obtained. Women and children of the enemy were kept as slaves. Warriors ornamented their heads with all kinds of feathers, leaves and plants, like the Aztecs and Mayas, or drew the head or skin of some wild animal over their foreheads, to protect the head. When hunting game they hid themselves in deer skins, and thus shot their game by decoy. The various superstitions of hunters are contained in Pareja's queries. He also speaks of their barbacoas or provision houses, and Le Moyne's picture shows that these were low palisade huts, roofed over, and having only one issue. In the maize gathering season, the whole crop was carried to these barns, and subsequently it was portioned out to every man according to his quality. The watchmen of these barns, when found to be neglectful of their duties, were executed by a heavy blow on the head with a war-club. 1880.] [Gatschet. As one of the pastimes of their young men is mentioned the throwing of balls against a square mat made of bulrush reeds, hanging from a pole 8-9 fathoms high; the one who succeeded in making the mat come down, was winner in the game. At the death of a holata or chief, men and women cut their hair off to half length, and a thorough abstention from food was ordered for three days; the deceased was buried ceremoniously, on the top of a terracemound, a smaller mound erected over his grave, and a large conch or marine shell, which had been his drinking cup, placed over this monticule. The conch was then surrounded by a circle of arrows stuck perpendicularly into the soil, at two or three feet distance from the conch. In a people which believes in the power of conjurers over ghosts and spirits, the influence of the bewitcher or shaman must be necessarily immense. From Pareja's queries we gather the fact that mostly old men, naribua, were acting as conjurers; they consecrated the arrows before a hunting party left for the woods, and when the game did not expire from the first shots, they prayed over another arrow which would certainly finish it; they produced rain, restored lost objects to their owners, spoke their benedictions over corn-cribs and new fish weirs, over a catch of fish and over baskets of recently gathered fruits. They treated the sick with incantations and physicked them with herbs; they sometimes cured them halfways only to exact more reward from them. They predicted future events, especially at a time when everybody was interested in what they might reveal: during war-expeditions. Before going to war, the chief sitting amidst his warriors, consulted one of the oldest and smartest conjurers (who had to be also an accomplished contortionist), concerning the result of the war, the force and the whereabouts of the enemy. In their midst the magician knelt down on his small round target in such a manner as not to come in contact with the soil; after various incantations he derived inspiration from demoniac powers, and while grimacing, drew a magic circle in the sand around his shield. After contorting himself in the most terrific manner for about twenty minutes, while singing incantations and uttering imprecations against the enemy, he finally stood up, and after getting cooler, he revealed to the "King" the number of the hostiles and their hiding places or whereabouts and the best moment to attack them. Although we find no direct mention of solar and lunar worship in Pareja's writings, both prevailed among the Timucua, and solar worship throughout the Southern territories. The term acuhiba, moon, really means indicator (of time), literally: "the one who tells." The Timucua worshiped the sun under the image of a deer; they raised a stuffed deer-skin on a high pole and testified their reverence for it by singing and dancing rites. The sun was invoked before a battle and praised after a victory gained; the natives once refused to accept meat from the French and * This is perhaps the origin of the tribal name Aïsa, Ais, Ays, previously mentioned. PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XVIII. 105. 31. PRINTED MARCH 26, 1880. made them understand that they were accustomed to wash their faces and not to eat before the sun had gone down. Another object closely connected with their beliefs was the sacred number three. While the Maskoki tribes had a traditional reverence for the number four on account of the four points of the compass and the winds coming from each of these four quarters, and while they assigned a particular color to each of these four points, we find over a dozen references in De Laudonnière to a worship of the number three among the Timucua. They fasted three days at the death of a chief, their scalp-dances lasted three days and three nights; at the toya festivity, which probably represents the green-corn festivity of other Indians, men ran into the woods, as if crazed, and stayed there three days, while the women cut themselves and their daughters, crying "he toya !" Even in Pareja this number is alluded to, for he mentions that chiefs just coming into power ordered a new fire to be made in their cabins to burn during six days, and at sowing time the chiefs caused six old men (ano miso) to eat a pot of fritters. Six is the double of three. The holy fire in the temple of the sun, among the Naktche, was fed by three logs only; and a Peruvian creation myth pretends that three eggs fell from the skies; from the golden egg issued the royal family, from the silver egg the nobility, and from the copper egg the commoners. Concerning their mode of sustenance the Timucua stood high above the northern savages, for they tilled the soil and were not altogether at the mercy of nature, when an inclement summer season had deprived them of food. A hoe, made of a heavy fish bone or shell adjusted to the end of a stick, served in loosening the compact soil; the women made grooves in the ground by hand and carefully deposited maize-seeds in each of them. Here the agricultural work did not devolve entirely on the women for the males turned the soil with their hoes. They made artificial ponds to let fish, eels, turtles, etc., come in, and afterwards caught them when needed. They were drinking the black drink, an exhilarating beverage made from the cassine plant (also known among the Creeks), and to this, probably, refers the charge of drunkenness made by Pareja. They ate alligators, snakes, dogs, and almost every kind of quadrupeds and fruits, and were seen mixing coals and sand in their food; their main staple, however, was maize, and the French saw them kissing the "baskets of mill," tapaga tapola, standing before them. During the three or four months of the rainy season they retired to the woods and lived there in huts covered with palmetto leaves. They did so evidently to avoid the burning rays of the subtropical sun. About their arts and domestic life not much is transmitted to us. The term taca ni timutema, "my fire is out" (Proc. of 1878, page 496), shows that they kept up the fire in the lodge all day. The description of the town, with the chief's house on a mound, as seen by Hernando de Soto on Tampa Bay, is too well known to need repetition here. The ordinary settlements of the Timucua were a conglomerate of huts surrounded by strong palisade fences, not unlike the kraals (from Span. corral, medieval 1880.] [Gatschet. Latin curtinale) of the Kaffirs. They must have been very fond of personal ornaments as Le Moyne's pictures tend to show, and tattooing with some indelible color was carried to a high pitch of artistic development. They seated themselves on coarse benches made of nine poles or canes running parallel, the benches forming half circles; there they held their councils of war and peace, while the women prepared food for them, or let the cassine drink make the round of the assembled warriors. They were adepts in the art of manufacturing fans, hats and other tissues from palmetto leaves, and also moulded large earthen vessels, in which water was carried. Not less were they acquainted with ideographic writing, for each of the two head-chiefs Olata Utina and Hostaqua sent five painted skins as presents to Captain René de Laudonnière. A study of Pareja's totemic list goes to show that two kinds of descendencies existed among the Timucua. The names of the first refer simply to the relations which the men of the tribe or tribes entertained to their chief, as councillors, etc.; but the second list contains the ancient names of the gentes or claus, as given to them through their totem. The majority of these totems are names of animals, and herein the Timucua do not differ from other North American Indians east of the Rocky Mountains. The two lists of Pareja seem to stand in no reciprocal connection, and hence it is to be presumed that a man who belonged, f. i., to the Anacotima could belong at the same time to the Apahola or some other clan mentioned in the second list. BIBLIOGRAPHY. The following are the titles of Pareja's works consulted by me in the library of the Historical Society of New York: I. Cathecismo en lengua Castellana, y Timuquana. En el qual se contiene io que se les puede enseñar a los adultos que an de ser baptizados. Compuesto por el P. F. Francisco Pareja, Religioso de la Orden del seraphico P. S. Francisco, guardian del Conuento de la purisima Cocepcion de N. Señora de S. Augustin, y Padre de la Custodia de sancta Elena de la Florida. (Woodcut.) EN MEXICO, en la imprêta de la Viuda de Pedro Balli. Por C. Adriano Cesar M. DC. XII. In 16mo., eighty leaves or 160 pages, not numbered, but every quire marked with a letter of the alphabet running from A to K inclusive, at lower right hand margin, the leaves being marked with Roman figures : Biii, Biiii, Gii, Iv etc. II. In the copy consulted by me the following "Doctrina" is bound into same volume as part of a second Catechism: Catechismo y breve exposicion de la doctrina Christiana muy util y necessaria, asi para los Españoles como para los Naturales, en Lengua Castellana y Timuquana, en modo de preguntas, y respuestas. Compuesto por el P. F. Francisco Pareja de la Orden de N. Seraphico P. S. Francisco, Padre de la Custodia de S. Elena de la Florida. |