the Six Nations (Iroquois). Brebeuf says, that as early as 1636 the
Jesuits taught the Hurons to build rectangular palisaded works, with
bastions. The Iroquois adopted the same practice at an early period,
omitting the ditch and embankment; and it is probable, that, even in
their primitive defences, the palisades, where the ground was of a nature
to yield easily to their rude implements, were planted simply in holes
dug for the purpose. Such seems to have been the Iroquois fortress
attacked by Champlain in 1615.

The Muscogees, with other Southern tribes, and occasionally the
Algonquins, had palisaded towns; but the palisades were usually but a
single row, planted upright. The tribes of Virginia occasionally
surrounded their dwellings with a triple palisade.--Beverly, History of
Virginia, 149. ]

Among these tribes there was no individual ownership of land, but each
family had for the time exclusive right to as much as it saw fit to
cultivate. The clearing process--a most toilsome one--consisted in
hacking off branches, piling them together with brushwood around the foot
of the standing trunks, and setting fire to the whole. The squaws,
working with their hoes of wood and bone among the charred stumps,
sowed their corn, beans, pumpkins, tobacco, sunflowers, and Huron hemp.
No manure was used; but, at intervals of from ten to thirty years,
when the soil was exhausted, and firewood distant, the village was
abandoned and a new one built.

There was little game in the Huron country; and here, as among the
Iroquois, the staple of food was Indian corn, cooked without salt in a
variety of forms, each more odious than the last. Venison was a luxury
found only at feasts; dog-flesh was in high esteem; and, in some of the