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Florida native food storage
Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121
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While we do not find it stated specifically that the Timucua cultivated tobacco, the fact may probably be assumed. The granary or storehouse has been mentioned, but the various accounts leave us in the dark as to whether all of these granaries were public or whether there were private granaries also. The reference in Le Moyne's account of the disposition of the corn crop would lead one to suppose that he is speaking of family granaries,1 and the same seems to be in some measure implied in the section in which he tells of the way in which native wild fruits were stored. He says: "There are in that region a great many islands, producing abundance of various kinds of fruits, which they gather twice a year, and carry home in canoes, and store up in roomy low granaries built of stones and earth, and roofed thickly with palm-branches and a kind of soft earth fit for the purpose. These granaries are usually erected near some mountain, or on the bank of some river, so as to be out of the sun's rays, in order that the contents may keep better. Here they also store up any other provisions which they may wish to preserve, and the remainder of their stores; and they go and get them as need may require, without any apprehensions of being defrauded. Indeed it is to be wished that, among the Christians, avarice prevailed no more than among them, and tormented no more the minds of men."2 This use of "stones and earth" for granaries is confined, so far as we now know, to Florida; elsewhere they were of poles. The mutual regard which they observed with reference to their stores did not prevent them from pilfering small articles from the French colonists. An anonymous writer says: "They are, however, the greatest thieves in the world, for they take as well with the foot as with the hand."3 But he exonerates the women from this charge. Le Challeux, however, confirms the main accusation: "They steal without conscience and claim all that they can carry away secretly."4 In the following section, where Le Moyne speaks of the storage of animal food, he is certainly referring to a public storehouse: "At a set time every year they gather in all sorts of wild animals, fish, and even crocodiles; these are then put in baskets, and loaded upon a sufficient number of the curly-haired hermaphrodites above mentioned, who carry them on their shoulders to the storehouse. This supply, however, they do not resort to Unless in case of the last necessity. In such event, in order to preclude any dissension, full notice is given to all interested; for they live in the utmost harmony among themselves. The chief, however, is at liberty to take whatever of this supply he may choose."8 It does not seem very likely that all of the animal food was put into public storehouses and all of the corn and wild fruits into private ones. Evidently both kinds of granary were in existence, but our authorities are not clear regarding the relative functions of the two. (Swanton)
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