Memoirs of a captivity among the Indians of North America, from childhood to the age of nineteen: with anecdotes descriptive of their manners and customs. To which is added, some account of the soil, climate, and vegetable productions of the territory westward of the Mississippi / [John Dunn Hunter].

  • Hunter, John Dunn, 1798?-1827
Date:
1824 [i.e. 1826?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of a captivity among the Indians of North America, from childhood to the age of nineteen: with anecdotes descriptive of their manners and customs. To which is added, some account of the soil, climate, and vegetable productions of the territory westward of the Mississippi / [John Dunn Hunter]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    exposures are as uniformly sterile. The former fre- quently produce tall and thick growths of oak, walnut (Juglans squamosa et nigra), red, mountain, and sugar maple, white locust, ash (Fraxinus), chesnut, chinqua- pin, sassafras, and several others common to the hills in the eastern states ; while the latter, and the tops of the hills, are thinly covered with stinted growths of red cedar (Juniperus Virginiana), pines (Pinus), scrubby oak, sour wood *, sawas berry*, and whortle- berries ( Vaccinium resinosum). Fourth. The swamps.-—These are not very ex- tensive nor numerous; but they are comparatively more so, as we proceed north, or approximate the Rocky Mountains. In general they may be denomi- nated fertile prairies, subject to occasional or long- continued overflowings: the soil appears to be much the same, though probably it reposes on strata of clay; as these grounds prevail to a greater extent among ridges composed almost entirely of this ma- terial. In some instances they support growths of trees similar to those on the river lands or alluvions ; in others, where more subject to inundations, they produce some species of the rush (Juncus), flags {Iris, et acorus), cat’s-tail {Typha), swamp cabbage {Pothos fcetida), and many other aquatic plants ; but in general they afford the wild rice, from which, after the buffalos and other grazing animals have trampled over it, the Indians collect their supplies. Fifth. Barrens.—The tops and sides of the ridges in general constitute the barrens ; though I have seen