Though they sometimes eat small marine animals, in their fresh state, raw, it is their common practice to roast or broil their food; for they are quite ignorant of our method of broiling, unless we allow that of preparing their porpoise broth is such; and indeed their vessels being all of wood, are quite insufficient for this purpose.
Their manner of eating is exactly consonant to the nastiness of their houses and persons; for the troughs and platters, in which they put their food, appear never to have been washed from the time they were first made, and the dirty remains of a former meal are only sweeped away by the succeeding one. They also tear every thing, solid or tough, to pieces, with their hands and teeth; for though they make use of their knives to cut off the larger portions, they have not, as yet, thought of reducing these to smaller pieces and mouthfuls, by the same means, though obviously more convenient and cleanly. But they seem to have no idea of cleanliness; for they eat the roots which they dig from the ground, without so much as shaking off the soil that adheres to them.
We are uncertain if they have any set time for meals; for we have seen them eat at all hours, in their canoes. And yet, from seeing several messes of the porpoise-broth preparing toward noon, when we visited the village, I should suspect that they make a principal meal about that time.
Their weapons are bows and arrows, slings, spears, short truncheons of bone, somewhat like the _patoo patoo_ of New Zealand, and a small pickaxe, not unlike the common American _tomahawk_. The spear has generally a long point, made of bone. Some of the arrows are pointed with iron; but most commonly their points were of indented bone. The tomahawk is a stone, six or eight inches long, pointed at one end, and the other end fixed into a handle of wood. This handle resembles the head and neck of the human figure; and the stone is fixed in the mouth, so as to represent an enormously large tongue. To make the resemblance still stronger, human hair is also fixed to it. This weapon they call _taaweesh_, or _tsuskeeah_. They have another stone weapon called _seeaik_, nine inches or a foot long, with a square point.