Food.
Wheat did not do well at first but oats grew all right and quite a good deal was raised, so that oatmeal was used and oatmeal porridge became a rather popular dish. Indian corn, maize, was the staple grain of the colonists. When they first came to America they found this grain growing and they learned from the Indians how to plant it, raise it, grind it, and cook it. The foods made from this corn still retain their Indian names, as samp, supawn, pone, succotash, hominy.
Samp was the corn pounded to a coarsely ground powder. Supawn was a thick corn-meal and milk porridge. Another way of preparing the corn by the Indians was called nocake or nookick, in which the corn was parched in the hot ashes, then taken up and the ashes sifted out, and then beaten into a powder. This was used on journeys, being put into a pouch, and it was quite sustaining as a small amount of it sufficed for a meal. Johnny-cake was made of corn-meal boiled with water, probably the same as our mush now. They also roasted the green corn, roasting-ears, and parched the dried corn.
A corn-husking of 1767 in Massachusetts is thus described in a diary of that time. "Made a husking Entertainm't. Possibly this leafe may last a Century and fall into the hands of some inquisitive Person for whose Entertainm't I will inform him that now there is a Custom amongst us of making an Entertainm't at husking of Indian Corn whereto all the neighboring Swains are invited and after the Corn is finished they like the Hottentots give three Cheers or huzza's but cannot carry in the husks without a Rhum bottle; they feign great Exertion but do nothing till Rhum enlivens them, when all is done in a trice, then after a hasty Meal about 10 at Night they go to their pastimes."[284]
The corn was shelled by hand or by raking the ear across the edge of a shovel or other piece of sharp iron and then ground in stone mortars with pestles or in wooden mortars. Later came "querns," hand-mills, which from the descriptions, must have been similar to the ones used by the Scotch housewives of the earlier times, as described in another place in this book. Then in Massachusetts came the first wind-mill in 1631 and the first water-mill in 1633.
When the colonists came to this country, they found the rivers and seas abounding with fish. It is stated that some of the rivers were so full of fish that horses ridden into them would step on the fish and kill them. The Indians killed them in the brooks by striking them with sticks and the colonists scooped them out alive with pans. In 1614, after having left Virginia, John Smith went to New England for whale and he found cod instead and in one month he caught sixty thousand of the cod. Two popular fish today, the shad and the salmon, were so common that the colonists were really ashamed to be seen eating them in their homes. A writer in 1636 stated that, "I myself at the turning of the tyde have seen such multitudes of sea bass that it seemed to me that one might goe over their backs dri-shod."[285]
Not only were there great numbers of fish, but also a great many different kinds, one writer of 1672 told of over two hundred kinds that were caught in the waters of New England. Not only was there great quantity and great variety but also great size. Writers of these early times tell of lobsters weighing twenty-five pounds and five and six feet long, and of oysters that were a foot or more across.
At the first the settlers were poorly provided with fishing-tackle, but it was soon brought in from across the sea and a great industry arose. Fishing-vessels were fitted out and the product sold to the colonies and Europe. "With every fishing-vessel that left Gloucester and Marblehead, the chief centres of the fishing industries, went a boy of ten or twelve to learn to be a skilled fisherman. He was called a 'cut-tail,' for he cut a wedge-shaped bit from the tail of every fish he caught, and when the fish were sorted out the cut-tails showed the boy's share of the profit."[286]
There was likewise a great abundance of wild game. Deer were found everywhere. They were at first without fear and came in droves near to the colonists. But this was not for long as the colonists began to kill them in great numbers, both for the food and for the hides. Wild turkeys were likewise plentiful at first and of great size, as they weighed thirty and forty and even sixty pounds. They came in flocks of a hundred or more and were destroyed as the deer, and in a short time they had disappeared from the settled parts, by 1690 rarely found near the coasts of New England. Wild geese were found in flocks of thousands. Doves were very plentiful. There were wild pigeons in vast quantities, so much so that in their flight the sun would be obscured and the sky darkened for some length of time, and where they roosted the limbs were broken off the trees and sometimes even the largest limbs and again the trees might be almost stripped of their limbs by the weight of the pigeons. There were many other kinds of game birds, as the pheasant, quail, woodcock, plover, snipe, curlew, and the like. Rabbits and squirrels were so numerous as to be a very great pest and in many places bounties were paid for their heads. "The Swedish traveler, Kalm, said that in Pennsylvania in one year, 1749, £8,000 was paid out for heads of black and gray squirrels, at three pence a head, which would show that over six hundred thousand were killed."[287]
There was an abundance of wild nuts which could be gathered and used, such as walnuts, hickory-nuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and the like. There were plenty of wild berries, as huckleberries, blackberries, and strawberries, and likewise wild grapes. The colonists used the pawpaw and other wild fruits found in the woods. "The North Carolinians even made puddings and what they called tarts of the American pawpaw."[288] They planted out apple-trees and peach-trees and other kinds of fruit trees and it was not many years till there was plenty of these cultivated fruits. The apples were especially valuable to them and used in various ways, applesauce, and apple-butter were made in great quantity by each family. "They made preserves and conserves, marmalets and quiddonies, hypocras and household wines, usquebarbs and cordials. They candied fruits and made syrups. They preserved everything that would bear preserving. I have seen old-time receipts for preserving quinces, 'respasse,' pippins, 'apricocks,' plums, 'damsins,' peaches, oranges, lemons, artichokes, green walnuts, elecampane roots, eringo roots, grapes, barberries, cherries; receipts for syrup of clove gillyflower, wormwood, mint, aniseed, clove, elder, lemons, marigolds, citron, hyssop, liquorice; receipts for conserves of roses, violets, borage flowers, rosemary, betony, sage, mint, lavender, marjoram, and 'piony;' rules for candying fruit, berries, and flowers, for poppy water, cordial, cherry water, lemon water, thyme water, Angelica water, Aqua Mirabilis, Aqua Cœlestis, clary water, mint water."[289]
The natives not only gave to the colonists the valuable Indian corn, but also with it three vegetables that are yet to this day raised in the field with this grain, being the pumpkin, the squash, and the bean. They also got the potato, both Irish and sweet, from the natives, but the colonists did not learn for quite a time how to prepare the Irish potato properly and so at first it was not liked and not greatly used. They supplemented the native list of vegetables with those grown in Europe, and so it was not long till they had growing peas and turnips and parsnips and carrots and cucumbers and many others.
Another product which they obtained from the natives, although not food, almost seemed to take its place as food, which was tobacco. This became about as great a necessity with the colonists as food and its use became general in all the colonies and among all classes of people, and even with women. If there was one people above all the other colonists in the use of tobacco it was the New York Dutch, who smoked incessantly, and yet the New Englanders were not far away from the lead. "Boston was the best market for snuff. The early lawmakers of Massachusetts had sought to put tobacco under ban, or at least to hamper it, after the example set in England, where tobacco was forbidden in ale-houses because it was believed to excite a thirst for strong drink. But revered preachers became fond of the pipe, and the restrictions were quite broken down by their example. Groups of New England ministers were wont to fill a room so full of smoke that it became stifling. Long before the close of the seventeenth century, ladies of social standing in New England 'smoked it,' as the phrase ran; and in 1708 one finds the Governor of Massachusetts showing friendly feeling by sociably smoking a pipe with the wife of Judge Sewall."[290]
The colonists found another food in the woods that helped them out greatly and that was wild honey, which helped to fill the need of sugar which was very scarce with them. They also got a supply of sweetening from the sugar-maple tree, whose sap they learned to use in making sugar and syrup. This became quite an important industry and helped to give a greater variety of cooked foods. This sugar making was important enough in Virginia to have it written about by Governor Berkeley, wherein he called the maple the sugar-tree. "The Sugar-Tree yields a kind of Sap or Juice which by boiling is made into Sugar. This Juice is drawn out, by wounding the Trunk of the Tree, and placing a Receiver under the Wound. It is said that the Indians make one Pound of Sugar out of eight Pounds of the Liquor. It is bright and moist with a full large Grain, the Sweetness of it being like that of good Muscovada."[291]
But the colonists did not altogether rely upon honey and maple-sugar for their sweetening as many families did keep a supply of sugar, and especially to sweeten the tea. This was in the form of a loaf or cone, called loaf-sugar, which weighed nine or ten pounds, and one cone would usually last a family an entire year. The sugar was cut up into lumps of equal and regular size by the women of the household, for which purpose they had sugar-shears or sugar-cutters.
The colonists began to raise cattle and hogs and sheep and so when wild game became scarce the domestic animals furnished the meat. There were no ways for keeping meat fresh for any length of time after it was killed and so it had to be preserved by being salted and pickled. They had smoke-houses for smoking and curing beef, ham, and bacon. They made sausage and head-cheese and rendered out the lard and the tallow. "Sausage-meat was thus prepared in New York farmhouses. The meat was cut coarsely into half-inch pieces and thrown into wooden boxes about three feet long and ten inches deep. Then its first chopping was by men using spades which had been ground to a sharp edge."[292]
With the raising of Indian corn and the clearing of ground so that grass might grow abundantly, the number of cows increased till in the eighteenth century milk and its products became quite an important industry. Mrs. Earle concludes that butter was not made by many families in the seventeenth century because of there being so few churns, as she states that in the inventories of the property of the early settlers of Maine there is but one churn named. But by the eighteenth century the care of cream and butter-making went on in every household in the country and with many in the town. Cheese, too, became a leading product and one of the staple foods.