[With John Fontaine at Christanna on April 17, 1716.]
" The fifth day . After breakfast I went down to the Saponey Indian town, which is about a musket shot from the fort. This town lieth in a plain by the river side. I walked round the town to view it. The houses join all the one to the other and altogether make a circle. The walls of their houses are large pieces of timber, which are squared and being sharpened at the lower end, they are put about two feet in the ground and about seven feet above the ground. They laid them as close as they could the one to the other, and when these posts are all fixed after this manner then they make a sort of a roof with rafters and cover the house with oak or hickory bark, which they strip off in great flakes, and lay it so closely that no rain can come in. Some of their houses are covered in a circular manner which they do by getting long saplings and stick each in the ground and so cover them with bark, but there is none of the houses in this town so covered. There is three ways of coming into this town or circle of houses which are passages of about 6 feet wide between two of the houses. All of the doors of the houses are on the inside of the ring and it is very level withinside which is in common with all the people to divert themselves. There is also in the centre of the inside circle a great stump of a tree. I asked the reason they left that stand, and they informed me it was for one of their head men to stand on when he had any thing of consequence to relate to them, that being raised, he may the better be heard.
"The Indian women bind their children to a board that is cut after the shape of the child. There is two pieces at the bottom of this board to tye the child's legs to, and a piece cut out behind so that all that the child doth falls from him and he is never dirty nor never wants to be changed. The head or top of the board is round, and there is a hole through the top of it, through which there is a string so that when the women are tired holding of them or have a mind to work they hang the board on which the children are tied to the limb of a tree or to a pin in a post for that purpose, and there the children swing about and divert themselves and are out of the reach of any thing that may hurt them. They keep those children this way until they are almost two years old, which I believe is the reason they are all so straight, and so few of them that are lame or odd shaped. Their houses are pretty large, never have no garrets or no other light than the door and the light that comes in from the hole in top of the house, which is to let out the smoke. They make their fires always in the middle of the houses. The chief of their household goods is a pot and wooden dishes and trays they make themselves. They seldom have any thing in their houses to sit upon, but sit commonly on the ground. They have small divisions in their houses to lie in. This is made with mats which they make of bullrushes. They also have bedsteads which raise them about two feet off the ground, upon which they lay bear and deer skins instead of a quilt. All the covering they have is a blanket. Those people have no sort of tame creatures [i.e., cows], but live altogether upon their hunting and corn, which their wives cultivate. They live as lazily and miserable as any people in the world." [This day's account to be continued.]
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