Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/123

This page needs to be proofread.

SECT. III.] SOUTHERN INDIANS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 87 ghany Mountains. He asserts positively, that the wolf of the woods is the Indian dog, that the Indians have no other dogs than domesticated wolves.* But his most remarkable assertion is, that the li Indian women never plant corn amongst us, as they do amongst the Iroquois, who are always at war and hunt- ing." The reason he alleges for the Iroquois usage was equally applicable to all the other Indians, without excepting those of North Carolina. The difference between the languages of those several tribes struck Lawson forcibly. He observes that he could find but one word common to the Tuscaroras and the Woccons, who lived but two leagues apart. In the absence of vocabularies, it is now impossible to ascertain, whether most of those several communities spoke languages radically different from each oth- er, or dialects of the same. But we are indebted to Lawson for those of the Tuscaroras, of the Pamlicos, and of the Woccons; and they certainly belong to three distinct languages. He did not suspect that of the Tuscaroras to be an Iroquois dialect, and that his short specimen of that of the Pamlicos would enable us to ascertain how far the Lenape tribes extended towards the south. On comparing the vocabularies of the Woccons and the Catawbas, out of fifty-one words found in both, sixteen appear to have more or less remote affinities ; and the Woccons have accordingly been designated as belonging to the same family of languages.! The Catawbas, according to Adair and Ramsay, could mus- ter one thousand five hundred warriors at the first settlement of South Carolina. Lawson estimates them, under the name of Esaws, at several thousand souls. Mr. Miller says, that they were originally called Flatheads, and were a terror to the surrounding tribes. They were able, at no very remote time, to drive away the Shawnoes from their temporary settlement,

  1. It is mentioned in Captain Franklin's first Expedition, that some Cop-

permine River Indians, having caught a litter of young wolves, kept; several in order to improve the breed of their dogs. f The following are the most remarkable. Woccon. Catawba. Woccon Catawba. one, tonne, dupunna, brother, yen rait lie, murrundeh two, numperre. naperra, maize , cose, koos, three, nam me e, nainunda, bread, ikettau, koostau, four, punnum-punne ,purre purra, house, ouke, Book, water, ejau, eeyau, snake, yaw-hauk, y-ah, Indians ,yauh-he, yayeh, goose, auhaun, ah-hab 7 wife, yecauau, yakezuh, fish, yacunne, y-ee.