e fire to see us.

December 23. A man came calling and shouting through some of the
houses, but we did not know what it meant, and after awhile Jeronimus
de la Croix came and told us what this was--that the savages are
preparing and arming. I asked them what all this was about, and they
said to me: "Nothing, we shall play with one another," and there were
four men with clubs and a party with axes and sticks. There were
twenty people armed, nine on one side and eleven on the other; and they
went off against each other, and they fought and threw each other.
Some of them wore armor and helmets that they themselves make of thin
reeds and strings braided upon each other so that no arrow or axe can
pass through to wound them severely; and after they had been playing
thus a good while the parties closed and dragged each other by the
hair, just as they would have done to their enemies after defeating
them and before cutting off their scalps. They wanted us to fire our
pistols, but we went off and left them alone. This day we were invited
to buy bear meat, and we also got half a bushel of beans and a quantity
of dried strawberries, and we bought some bread, that we wanted to take
on our march. Some of the loaves were baked with nuts and cherries and
dry blueberries and the grains of the sunflower.

December 24. It was Sunday. I saw in one of the houses a sick man.
He had invited two of their doctors that could cure him--they call them
simachkoes; and as soon as they came they began to sing and to light a
big fire. They closed the house most carefully everywhere, so that the
breeze could not come in, and after that each of them wrapped a
snakeskin around his head. They washed their hands and faces, lifted
the sick man from his place, and laid him alongside the big fire. Then
they took a bucket of water, put some medicine in it, and washed in
this water a stick about half a yard long, and kept sticking it in
their throats so that no end of it was to be seen; and then they spat
on the patient's head, and over all his body; and after that they made
all sorts of farces, as shouting and raving, slapping of the hands; so
are their manners; with many demonstrations upon one things and another
till they perspired so freely that their perspiration ran down all sides.

December 25--being Christmas. We rose early in the morning and wanted
to go to the Sinnekens; but, as it was snowing steadily, we could not
go, because nobody wa