They delight much to feed on roasting ears; that is, the Indian corn, gathered green and milky, before it is grown to its full bigness, and roasted before the fire in the ear. For the sake of this diet, which they love exceedingly, they are very careful to procure all the several sorts of Indian corn before mentioned, by which means they contrive to prolong their season. And indeed this is a very sweet and pleasing food.
They have growing near their towns, peaches, strawberries, cushaws, melons, pompions, macocks, &c. The cushaws and pompions they lay by, which will keep several months good after they are gathered; the peaches they save by drying them in the sun; they have likewise several sorts of the phaseoli.
In the woods, they gather chinkapins, chestnuts, hickories and walnuts. The kernels of the hickories they beat in a mortar with water, and make a white liquor like milk, from whence they call our milk hickory. Hazelnuts they will not meddle with, though they make a shift with acorns sometimes, and eat all the other fruits mentioned before, but they never eat any sort of herbs or leaves.
They make food of another fruit called cuttanimmons, the fruit of a kind of arum, growing in the marshes: they are like boiled peas or capers to look on, but of an insipid earthy taste. Captain Smith in his History of Virginia calls them ocaughtanamnis, and Theod. de Bry in his translation, sacquenummener.
Out of the ground they dig trubs, earth nuts, wild onions, and a tuberous root they call tuckahoe, which while crude is of a very hot and virulent quality: but they can manage it so, as in case of necessity, to make bread of it, just as the East Indians and those of Egypt are said to do of colocassia, or the West Indians of cassava. It grows like a flag in the miry marshes, having roots of the magnitude and taste of Irish potatoes, which are easy to be dug up.
§ 16. They accustom themselves to no set meals, but eat night and day, when they have plenty of provisions, or if they have got any thing that is a rarity. They are very patient of hunger, when by any accident they happen to have nothing to eat; which they make more easy to themselves by girding up their bellies, just as the wild Arabs are said to do in their long marches; by which means they are less sensible of the impressions of hunger.
§ 17. Among all this variety of food, nature hath not taught them the use of any other drink than water; which though they have in cool and pleasant springs every where, yet they will not drink that if they can get pond water, or such as has been warmed by the sun and weather. Baron Lahontan tells of a sweet juice of maple, which the Indians to the northward gave him, mingled with water; but our Indians use no such drink. For their strong drink they are altogether beholden to us, and are so greedy of it, that most of them will be drunk as often as they find an opportunity; notwithstanding which it is a prevailing humor among them, not to taste any strong drink at all, unless they can get enough to make them quite drunk, and then they go as solemnly about it as if it were part of their religion.
§ 18. Their fashion of sitting at meals is on a mat spread on the ground, with their legs lying out at length before them, and the dish between their legs; for which reason they seldom or never sit more than two together at a dish, who may with convenience mix their legs together and have the dish stand commodiously to them both, as appears by the figure.
The spoons which they eat with do generally hold half a pint; and they laugh at the English for using small ones, which they must be forced to carry so often to their mouths that their arms are in danger of being tired before their belly.
