tribes of Florida were divided, and with three of which the French came
into contact. The first was that of Satouriona; and the second was that
of the people called Thimagoas, who, under a chief named Outina, dwelt
in forty villages high up the St. John's. The third was that of the
chief, cacique, or paracoussy whom the French called King Potanou, and
whose dominions lay among the pine barrens, cypress swamps, and fertile
hummocks westward and northwestward of this remarkable river. These
three confederacies hated each other, and were constantly at war. Their
social state was more advanced than that of the wandering hunter tribes.
They were an agricultural people, and around all their villages were
fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The harvest was gathered into a
public granary, and they lived on it during three fourths of the year,
dispersing in winter to hunt among the forests.

They were exceedingly well formed; the men, or the principal among them,
were tattooed on the limbs and body, and in summer were nearly naked.
Some wore their straight black hair flowing loose to the waist; others
gathered it in a knot at the crown of the head. They danced and sang
about the scalps of their enemies, like the tribes of the North; and
like them they had their "medicine-men," who combined the functions of
physicians, sorcerers, and priests. The most prominent feature of their
religion was sun-worship.

Their villages were clusters of large dome-shaped huts, framed with
poles and thatched with palmetto leaves. In the midst was the dwelling
of the chief, much larger than the rest, and sometimes raised on an
artificial mound. They were enclosed with palisades, and, strange to
say, some of them were approached by wide avenues, artificially graded,
and several hundred yards in length. Traces of these may still be seen,
as may also the mounds in which the Floridians, like the Hurons and