Traces of the institution of marriage can just be perceived
among them, and nothing more. A man and woman join
themselves together without any particular ceremony other
than that the man by previous agreement with the woman gives
her some zeewant or cloth, which on their separation, if it
happens soon, he often takes again. Both men and women
are utterly unchaste and shamelessly promiscuous in their
intercourse, which is the cause of the men so often changing
their wives and the women their husbands. Ordinarily they
have but one wife, sometimes two or three, but this is
generally among the chiefs. They have also among them
different conditions of persons, such as noble and ignoble.
The men are generally lazy, and do nothing until they
become old and unesteemed, when they make spoons, wooden
bowls, bags, nets and other similar articles; beyond this
the men do nothing except fish, hunt and go to war. The
women are compelled to do the rest of the work, such as
planting corn, cutting and drawing fire-wood, cooking,
taking care of the children and whatever else there is to
be done. Their dwellings consist of hickory saplings,
placed upright in the ground and bent arch-wise; the tops
are covered with barks of trees, which they cut for this
purpose in great quantities. Some even have within them
rough carvings of faces and images, but these are generally
in the houses of the chiefs. In the fishing and hunting
seasons, they lie under the open sky or little better.
They do not live long in one place, but move about several
times in a year, at such times and to such places as it
appears best and easiest for them to obtain subsistence.