Of the different accounts by ancient writers of the manners and customs of the Indians of our part of the State and West Jersey, about the clearest and most readable is by the celebrated Swedish traveller, Professor Kalm*, who visited our State in 1748, and from whose writings the following extracts are taken:

When the Indians intended to fall a thick, strong tree, they could not make use of their clumsy stone hatchets, and for want of proper instruments, employed fire. They set fire to a great quantity of wood at the root of the tree, and made it fall by that means. But that the fire might not reach higher than they would have it, they fastened some rags on a pole, dipped them in water, and kept constantly wetting the tree a little above the fire.

Whenever the Indians intend to hollow out a thick tree for a canoe, they lay dry branches all along the stem of the trees as far as it must be hollowed out. Then they put fire to these dry branches, and as soon as they are burned out, they are replaced by others. While these branches are burning, the Indians are very busy with wet rags and pouring water upon the tree to prevent the fire from spreading too far in at the sides and at the ends. The tree being burnt hollow as far as they found it sufficient, or as far as it could without damaging the canoe, they took their stone hatchets, or sharp flints, or sharp shells, and scraped off the burnt part of the wood, and smoothed the boat within. By this means they likewise gave it what shape they pleased; instead of using a hatchet they shaped it by fire. A good sized canoe was commonly thirty or forty feet long.

The chief use of their hatchets was to make fields for maize plantations; for if the ground where they intended to make corn fields was covered with trees, they cut off the bark all around the trees with their hatchets, especially at a time when they lose their sap. By that means, the trees became dry and could not partake any more nourishment, and the leaves could no longer obstruct the rays of the sun. The small trees were pulled out by force, and the ground was a little turned up with crooked or sharp branches.

They had stone pestles about a foot long and as thick as a man's arm, for pounding maize, which was their chief and only corn. They pounded all their corn in hollow trees; some Indians had only wooden pestles. They had neither wind mills, water mills, nor hand mills to grind it, and did not so much as know a mill before the Europeans came to this country. I have spoken with old Frenchmen in Canada, who told me the Indians had been astonished beyond expression, when the French set up the first wind mill. They came in numbers even from the most distant parts to view this wonder, and were not tired with sitting near it for several days together, in order to observe it; they were long of opinion that it was not driven by wind, but by spirits who lived within it. They were partly under the same astonishment when the first water mill was built.

Before the coming of the Europeans, the Indians were entirely unacquainted with the use of iron. They were obliged to supply the want with sharp stones, shells, claws of birds and wild beasts, pieces of bone and other things of that kind, whenever they intended to make hatchets, knives and such like instruments. From whence it appears they must have led a very wretched life. Their hatchets were made of stone, in shape similar to that of wedges used to cleave wood, about half a foot long, and broad in proportion; they are rather blunter than our wedges. As this hatchet must be fixed with a handle, there was a notch made all around the thick end. To fasten it, they split a stick at one end, and put the stone between it, so that the two halves of the stick came into the notches of the stone; then they tied the two split ends together with a rope or something like it, almost in the same way as smiths fasten the instruments with which they cut off iron, to a split stick. Some of these stone hatchets were not notched or furrowed at the upper end, and it seems that they only held these in their hands to hew or strike with them, and did not make handles to them. Some were made of hard rock or stone. Fish hooks were made of bones or birds' claws.