The History of Virginia, in Four Parts

by Robert Beverley

1. Their muskmelons resemble the large Italian kind, and generally fill four or five quarts.

2. Their watermelons were much more large, and of several kinds, distinguished by the color of their meat and seed; some are red, some yellow, and others white meated; and so of the seed, some are yellow, some red, and some black; but these are never of different colors in the same melon. This fruit the Muscovites call arpus; the Turks and Tartars karpus, because they are extremely cooling. The Persians call them hindnanes, because they had the first seed of them from the Indies. They are excellently good, and very pleasant to the taste, as also to the eye; having the rind of a lively green color, streaked and watered, the meat of a carnation, and the seed black and shining, while it lies in the melon.

3. Their pompions I need not describe, but must say they are much larger and finer than any I ever heard of in England.

4. Their cushaws are a kind of pompion, of a bluish green color, streaked with white, when they are fit for use. They are larger than the pompions, and have a long narrow neck. Perhaps this may be the ecushaw of T. Harriot.

5. Their macocks are a sort of melopepones, or lesser sort of pompion or cushaw. Of these they have great variety; but the Indian name macock serves for all, which name is still retained among them. Yet the clypeatæ are sometimes called cymnels, (as are some others also,) from the lenten cake of that name, which many of them very much resemble. Squash, or squanter-squash, is their name among the northern Indians, and so they are called in New York and New England. These being boiled whole, when the apple is young, and the shell tender, and dished with cream or butter, relish very well with all sorts of butcher's meat, either fresh or salt. And whereas the pompion is never eaten till it be ripe, these are never eaten after they are ripe.

6. The Indians never eat the gourds, but plant them for other uses. Yet the Persians, who likewise abound with this sort of fruit, eat the cucurbita lagenaris, which they call kabach, boiling it while it is green, before it comes to its full maturity, for when it is ripe the rind dries, and grows as hard as the bark of a tree, and the meat within is so consumed and dried away, that there is then nothing left but the seed, which the Indians take clean out, and afterwards use the shells, instead of flagons and cups, as is done also in several other parts of the world.

7. The maracock, which is the fruit of what we call the passion flower, our natives did not take the pains to plant, having enough of it growing everywhere, though they often eat it; this fruit is about the size of a pullet's egg.

§ 20. Besides all these, our natives had originally amongst them Indian corn, peas, beans, potatoes and tobacco.

This Indian corn was the staff of food upon which the Indians did ever depend; for when sickness, bad weather, war, or any other ill accident kept them from hunting, fishing and fowling, this, with the addition of some peas, beans, and such other fruits of the earth, as were then in season, was the family's dependence, and the support of their women and children.

There are four sorts of Indian corn: two of which are early ripe, and two late ripe, all growing in the same manner; every single grain of this when planted produces a tall upright stalk, which has several ears hanging on the sides of it, from six to ten inches long. Each ear is wrapt up in a cover of many folds, to protect it from the injuries of the weather. In every one of these ears are several rows of grain, set close to one another, with no other partition but of a very thin husk. So that oftentimes the increase of this grain amounts to above a thousand for one.