[190] See also the Voyages, p. 73. “It is almost incredible,” says Higginson (New-England’s Plantation, l. c., p. 118), “what great gaine some of our English planters have had by our Indian corne. Credible persons have assured me,—and the partie himselfe avouched the truth of it to me,—that, of the setting of thirteen gallons of corne, hee hath had encrease of it 52 hogsheads; every hogshead holding seven bushels, of London measure: and every bushell was by him sold and trusted to the Indians for so much beaver as was worth 18 shillings. And so, of this 13 gallons of corne, which was worth 6 shillings 8 pence, he made about 327 pounds of it the yeere following, as by reckoning will appeare; where you may see how God blessed husbandry in this land. There is not such greate and plentifull eares of corne, I suppose, any where else to bee found but in this countrey; because, also of varietie of colours,—as red, blew, and yellow, &c.: and of one corne there springeth four or five hundred.” Roger Williams (Key, l. c., pp. 208, 221) has some interesting particulars of the Indian use of their corn. According to him, the Indian msickquatash (that is succotash, as we call it now) was “boiled corn whole,” and nawsaump, a kind of meal pottage unparched. From this the English call their samp; which is the Indian corn beaten and boiled, and eaten, hot or cold; with milk or butter,—which are mercies beyond the natives’ plain water, and which is a dish exceeding wholesome for the English bodies.
[191] Acorus Calamus, L.; common to Europe and America. In his Voyages, p. 77, the author drops properly, in mentioning this, the injurious prefix. It seems that our New-England forefathers used the leaves to cover their cold floors, as they had used rushes at home; and, according to Sir W. J. Hooker (Br. Fl., vol. i. p. 159), the pleasant smell of the plant has recommended it, in like manner, “for strewing on the floor of the cathedral at Norwich, on festival days.”
[192] Allium Canadense, L., probably.—See also p. 55, note 4.
[193] “Knaves’-mustard (for that it is too bad for honest men).”—Gerard, p. 262. The “New-England mustard,” which was like it, may be Lepidium Virginicum, L.; which, having “a taste like common garden-cress, or peppergrass” (Bigel., Fl. Bost., in loco), perhaps attracted the first settlers.
[194] The “many flowers,” with reflexed sepals, perhaps refer this to our noble American Turk’s-cap (Lilium superbum, L.), rather than to the yellow lily (L. Canadense, L.).
[196] “They take their wuttammauog,—that is, a weak tobacco,—which the men plant themselves, very frequently. Yet I never see any take so excessively as I have seen men in Europe; and yet excess were more tolerable in them, because they want the refreshing of beer and wine, which God had vouchsafed Europe.”—R. Williams, Key, l. c., p. 213. And, in another place, the same writer says that tobacco is “commonly the only plant which men labour in” (he is speaking of the Indians); “the women managing all the rest” (p. 208). Wood, in his list of Indian words (New-Eng. Prospect, ad ult.), spells the Indian word, above given, ottommaocke,—(perhaps both are comparable with “wuttahimneash, strawberries” Williams, l. c., p. 220), and “weetimoquat, it smells sweet” (Vocab. of Narraganset Lang., in Hist. Coll., vol. v. p. 82); og, ock, and ash, being all plural terminations; between which and “the noun in the singular one or more consonants or vowels are frequently interspersed” (ibid., vol. iii. p. 222, note); and oquat, from the context, the verbal; and the root appearing possibly the same,—and also defines it as tobacco. There is much other testimony that the New-England savages were found using “tobacco” (as Mourt’s Relation, l. c., p. 230; and Winslow’s Relation, l. c., p. 253); but our author’s text, above, appears to distinguish the true herb, “not much planted,” from “a small kind called pooke,” which “the Indians make use of.” And again, more clearly, in his Voyages, we have to the same effect: “the Indians in New England use a small, round-leafed tobacco, called by them or the fishermen poke. It is odious to the English.... Of marchantable ... tobacco, ... there is little of it planted in New England; neither have they” (both clauses appear to refer to the English) “learned the right way of curing of it.” This “marchantable tobacco” was no doubt mainly Nicotiana tabacum, L.; but the other kind, the weak tobacco,—cultivated, as Williams tells us, by the Indians, and recognized as tobacco by the English,—was not, as Wood says (N. E. Prospect, l. c.), colt’s-foot, but Nicotiana rustica, L. (the yellow henbane of Gerard’s Herbal, p. 356), well known to have been long in cultivation among the American savages, and now a naturalized relic of that cultivation in various parts of the United States. The name, poke, or pooke,—if it be, as is supposable, the same with “puck, smoke,” of the Narraganset vocabulary of R. Williams (Hist. Coll., vol. v. p. 84),—was perhaps always indefinite, and, since Cutler’s day, has been applied in New England to the green hellebore (Veratrum viride, Ait.); but this was not, it is evident, the poke of the first settlers. The name is also given to Phytolacca decandra, L. (the skoke of Cutler), and the hellebore apparently distinguished from this as Indian poke; but the application of the name to the former, at least, probably had its origin among the whites.
[197] The figure sufficiently exhibits Sarracenia purpurea, L.
[198] “Live-for-ever. It is a kind of cud-weed.... It growes now plentifully in our English gardens.... The fishermen, when they want” (that is, lack) “tobacco, take this herb; being cut and dryed.”—Voyages, p. 78; where the author adds the peculiar medicinal virtues of the plant, which are the same as those assigned by Gerard (p. 644) to the genus. Compare, as to this, Wood and Bache, Dispens., p. 1334. The species intended by Josselyn is our everlasting (Antennaria margaritacea (L.) Br.), described by Gerard, and figured by Johnson in his edition of the former (p. 641), and first published by Clusius (Gnaphalium Americanum, Rar. Pl. Hist., vol. i. p. 327) in 1601. Clusius had it from England, says Johnson. The dried herb, used by the fishermen instead of tobacco, and no doubt called by them poke, may have been mistaken by Wood for colt’s-foot, the leaves of which were “smoked by the ancients in pulmonary complaints; ... and, in some parts of Germany, are at the present time said to be substituted for tobacco.”—Wood and Bache, Dispens., p. 1401. Cornus sericea, L.,—“called by the natives squaw-bush” (Williamson’s Hist. Maine, vol. i. p. 125), and by the western Indians kinnikinnik (Gray, Man., p. 161); furnished, in its inner bark (on the medicinal properties of which, see especially Rees’s Cycl., Amer. ed., in loco), a substitute for Nicotiana,—very widely approved among the native Americans. The name, Indian tobacco, given to Lobelia inflata, L. (the emetic-weed of Cutler, l. c., p. 484; who “first attracted to it the attention of the profession”), by the whites, is in some connections confusing, and might well be displaced by wild tobacco, which is also in popular use.
[199] Œnothera biennis, L. (Johnson’s Gerard, p. 475),—known to Europeans, according to Linnæus (Sp. Pl., p. 493), as early as 1614; but first described and figured by Prosper Alpinus, in his posthumous De Pl. Exoticis, p. 325, t. 324, cit. L. Johnson says that Parkinson gave it the English name of tree-primrose, which it still keeps. It is “vulgarly known by the name of scabish (a corruption, probably of scabious)” in the country.—Bigel. Fl. Bost., in loco. Josselyn describes the plant in his Voyages, p. 78.