"There are within this town about fifty long houses of about fifty
paces or more each, and twelve or fifteen paces wide and all made of
timbers covered and garnished with great pieces of bark and strips of
the said timber, as broad as tables, well tied artificially according
to their manner. And within these there are many lodgings and chambers,
and in the middle of these houses there is a great room on the ground
where they make their fire and live in common; after that the men
retire with their wives and children to their said chambers. Likewise
they have granaries at the top of their houses where they put their
corn of which they make their bread, which they call 'carraconny,'[11]
and they make it in the manner following: They have mortars of wood
as for braying flax, and beat the said corn into powder with pestles
of wood; then they mix it into paste and make round cakes of it,
which they put on a broad stone which is hot; then they cover it with
hot stones, and so bake their bread instead of in an oven. They make
likewise many stews of the said corn, and beans and peas of which they
have enough, and also of big cucumbers and other fruits. They have also
in their houses great vessels like tons, where they put their fish,
eels and others, the which they dry in the smoke during the summer and
live upon it in the winter. And of this they make a great store, as we
have seen by experience. All their living is without any taste of salt,
and they lie on barks of trees stretched upon the earth, with wretched
coverings of skins from which they make their clothing--namely, wolves,
beavers, martens, foxes, wild cats, deer, stags, and other wild beasts;
but the most part of them go almost entirely naked. The most precious
thing that they have in their world is 'esnogny,'[12] the which is
white as snow, and they take it into the same river from the
cornibotz[13] in the manner which follows: When a man heserved
death, or when they have taken any enemies in war, they kill them, then
cut them into the buttocks, thighs, and shoulders with great gashes;
afterward in the places where the said esnogny is they sink the said
body to the bottom of the water, and leave it ten or twelve hours,
then draw it up and find within the said gashes and incisions the said
cornibots, of which they make bead money and use it as we do gold and
silver, and hold it the most precious thing in the world. It has the
virtue of stanching blood from the nostrils, because we have tried it.
"All the said people give themselves only to tillage and fishing for a
living; for the goods of this world they make no account, because they
have no knowledge of them, and as they budge not from their country,
and do not go about like those of Canada[14] and of the Saguenay.
Notwithstanding the said Canadians are their subjects, with eight or
nine other peoples who are upon the said river.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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