im six otter traps for
use in the Cat Fish Lake camp.

Fishing.

Fishing is also a profitable industry. For this the hook and line are
often used; some also use the spoon hook. But it is a common practice
among them to kill the fish with bow and arrow, and in this they are
quite skillful. One morning some boys brought me a bass, weighing
perhaps sis pounds, which one of them had shot with an arrow.

Stock Raising.

Stock raising, in a small way, may be called a Seminole industry.
I found that at least fifty cattle, and probably more, are owned by
members of the tribe and that the Seminole probably possess a thousand
swine and five hundred chickens. The latter are of an excellent breed.
At Cat Fish Lake an unusual interest in horses seems now to be
developing. I found there twenty horses. I was told that there are
twelve horses at Fish Eating Creek, and I judge that between thirty-five
and forty of these animals are now in possession of the tribe.

Koonti.

The unique industry, in the more limited sense of the word, of the
Seminole is the making of the Koonti flour. Koonti is a root containing
a large percentage of starch. It is said to yield a starch equal to
that of the best Bermuda arrowroot. White men call it the "Indian
bread root," and lately its worth as an article of commerce has been
recognized by the whites. There are now at least two factories in
operation in Southern Florida in which the Koonti is made into a flour
for the white man's market. I was at one such factory at Miami and saw
another near Orlando. I ate of a Koonti pudding at Miami, and can say
that, as it was there prepared and served with milk and guava jelly, it
was delicious. As might be supposed, the Koonti industry, as carried on
by the whites, produces a far finer flour than that which the Indians
manufacture. The Indian process, as I watched it at Horse Creek, was
this: The roots were gathered, the earth was washed from them, and they
were laid in heaps near the "Koonti log."

[Illustration: Fig. 69. Koonti log.]

The Koonti log, so called, was the trunk of a large pine tree, in which
a number of holes, about nine inches square at the top, their sides
sloping downward to a point, had been cut side by side. Each of these
holes was the property of some one of the squaws or of the children of
the camp. For each of the holes, which were to serve as mortars, a
pestle made of some hard wood had been furnished. (Fig. 69.)

[Illustrat