There is very little information available on the aboriginal methods of tobacco culture in the eastern United States. Early writers say that it was not grown with other crops, as it was believed to be injurious to them, and was usually cultivated by men. Mr. Milford Chandler informs me that the Cayuga, in New York State, had permanent tobacco beds in which the plant was grown year after year. These beds were lightly manured from time to time, but were not cultivated, and the plants were left to propagate themselves. The leaves were gathered, but the stems, with the seed pods, were left standing in the patch. The Seneca, another tribe of the Iroquois confederacy, simply scattered the seeds on the ground and had a religious prohibition against cultivating the plant. Mr. Alanson Skinner informs me that the Kickapoo and Potawatomi made large brush piles fifty or more feet long and ten or twelve feet wide which they fired about the middle of June. When the ashes were cold, the ground was hoed up, mixed with the ashes, and planted with tobacco and pumpkins. The tobacco gardens were made in the woods, remote from the villages, and were surrounded by brush fences. The Sauk also planted their tobacco in the ashes of brush-fires, but did not break the ground or cultivate the crop. In some cases they simply threw a handful of seeds on the ground near the lodge. The Kickapoo, Potawatomi and Sauk all gathered the leaves of the plant in late August. They spread them on hides or blankets, and when they had wilted, rolled them like tea-leaves. When dry, the leaves were crushed. The reason assigned for the rolling was that leaves treated in this way did not crush to fine powder like those that had been dried flat. Most of the eastern tribes grew only enough tobacco for their own needs, but one, the Tionontati, raised large quantities of it for export and, on this account, were called Tobacco People (Nation de Petun) by the French.