Source: Amy Notes (ID702)
Author: Howard, Amy (ID633)
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If an Indian were driven out into the extensive woods, with only a knife and tomohawk, or a small ha
If an Indian were driven out into the extensive woods, with only a knife and tomohawk, or a small hatchet, it is not to be doubted but he would fatten, even where a wolf would starve. He could soon collect fire, by rubbing two dry pieces of wood together, make a bark hut, earthen vessels, and a bow and arrows; then kill wild game, fish, fresh water tortoises, gather a plentiful variety of vegetables, and live in affluence. [This must be how Juan Ignacio survived his trips. Maybe someone prepares provisions for him but he always forgets to take them, since he doesn?t really need them.
Cross references
How Indians survive in the wild
Date Created: 2023-10-12 20:56:17
Source: The History of the American Indians (ID 298)
Author: Adair, James (ID 213)
Content_id: 21108
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS Their old fields abound with larger strawberries than I have seen in any part of the world; insomuch, that in the proper season, one may gather a hat-full, in the space of two or three yards square. They have a sort of wild potatoes, which grow plentifully in their rich low lands, from South-Carolina to the Missisippi, and partly serve them instead of bread, either in the woods a hunting, or at home when the foregoing summer's crop fails them. They have a small vine, which twines, chiefly round the watry alder; and the hogs ‘feed" often upon the grapes. Their surface is uneven, yet inclining to a round figure. They are large, of a coarse grain, well-tasted, and very wholesome; in the woods, they are a very agreeable repast. There grows a long flag, in shallow ponds, and on the edges of running waters, with an ever-green, broad, round leaf, a little indented where it joins the stalk; it bears only one leaf, that always floats on the surface of the water, and affords plenty of cooling small nuts, which make a sweet-tasted, and favourite bread, when mixed with Indian corn flour. It is a sort of marsh-mallows, and reckoned a speedy cure for burning maladies, either outward or inward, -- for the former, by an outward application of the leaf; and for the latter, by a decoction of it drank plentifully. The Choktah so highly esteem this vegetable, that they call one of their head-towns, by its name. Providence hath furnished even the uncultivated parts of America with sufficient to supply the calls of nature. -- Formerly, about fifty miles to the north-east of the Chikkasah country, I saw the chief part of the main camp of the Shawano, consisting of about 450 persons, on a tedious ramble to the Muskohge country, where they settled, seventy-miles above the Alabahma-garrison: they had been straggling in the woods, for the space of four years, as they assured me, yet in general they were more corpulent than the Chikkasah who accompanied me, notwithstanding they had lived during that time, on the wild products of the American desarts. This evinces how easily nature's wants are supplied, and that the divine goodness extends to America and its inhabitants. They are acquainted with a great many herbs and roots, of which the general part of the English have not the least knowledge. If an Indian were driven out into the extensive woods, with only a knife and tomohawk, or a small hatchet, it is not to be doubted but he would fatten, even where a wolf would starve. He could soon collect fire, by rubbing two dry pieces of wood together, make a bark hut, earthen vessels, and a bow and arrows; then kill wild game, fish, fresh water tortoises, gather a plentiful variety of vegetables, and live in affluence. [This must be how Juan Ignacio survived his trips. Maybe someone prepares provisions for him but he always forgets to take them, since he doesn’t really need them.] Formerly, they made their knives of flint-stone, or of split canes; and sometimes they are now forced to use the like, in slaying wild animals, when in their winter hunt they have the misfortune to lose their knives.