Meanwhile, Satouriona, “lord of all that country,” as the narratives style him, was seized with misgivings, learning these mighty preparations.  The work was but begun, and all was din and confusion around the incipient fort, when the startled Frenchmen saw the neighboring height of St. John’s swarming with naked warriors.  The prudent Laudonniere set his men in array, and for a season pick and spade were dropped for arquebuse and pike.  The savage potentate descended to the camp.  The artist Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his likeness from memory,—­a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment.  He came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a troop of young Indians armed with spears.  Twenty musicians followed, blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds.  Arrived, he seated himself on the ground “like a monkey,” as Le Moyne has it in the grave Latin of his “Brevis Narratio.”  A council followed, in which broken words were aided by signs and pantomime.  A treaty of alliance was made, and Laudonniere had the folly to promise the chief that he would lend him aid against his enemies.  Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his Indians to aid the French at their work.  They obeyed with alacrity, and in two days the buildings of the fort were all thatched after the native fashion with leaves of the palmetto.

A word touching these savages.  In the peninsula of Florida were several distinct Indian confederacies, with three of which the French were brought into contact.  The first was that of Satouriona.  The next was the potent confederacy of the Thimagoa, under a chief called Outina, whose forty villages were scattered among the lakes and forests around the upper waters of this remarkable river.  The third was that of “King Potanou,” whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John’s.  The three communities were at deadly enmity.  Their social state was more advanced than that of the wandering hunter-tribes of the North.  They were an agricultural people.  Around all their villages were fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins.  The harvest, due chiefly to the labor of the women, was gathered into a public granary, and on this they lived during three-fourths of the year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the forests.

Their villages were clusters of huts thatched with palmetto.  In the midst was the dwelling of the chief, much larger than the rest, and sometimes raised on an artificial mound.  They were inclosed with palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length.  Remains of them may still be seen, as may also the mounds in which the Floridians, like the Hurons and various other tribes, collected at stated intervals the bones of their dead.