"The women," says Roger Williams, "set or plant, weede and hill, and gather and barne all the corne and Fruites of the field," and of drying the corn, he adds, "which they doe carefully upon heapes and Mats many dayes, they barne it up, covering it up with Mats at night, and opening when the Sun is hot."
The following are testimonies as to the use made by the natives of the
Indian corn as food:—
"They brought with them in a thing like a Bow-case, which the principall of them had about his wast, a little of their Corne powdered to Powder, which put to a little water they eate."—Mourts Relation, London, 1622, Dexter's ed., p. 88.
"Giving us a kinde of bread called by them Maizium."—Idem, p. 101.
"They seldome or never make bread of their Indian corne, but seeth it whole like beanes, eating three or four cornes with a mouthfull of fish or flesh, sometimes eating meate first and cornes after, filling chinckes with their broth."—Wood's New Eng. Prospect, London, 1634. Prince Society's ed., pp. 75, 76.
"Nonkekich. Parch'd meal, which is a readie very wholesome, food, which they eate with a little water hot or cold: … With spoonfull of this meale and a spoonfull of water from the Brooke, have I made many a good dinner and supper."—Roger Williams's Key, London, 1643, Trumbull's ed., pp. 39, 40.
"Their food is generally boiled maize, or Indian corn, mixed with kidney beans or Sometimes without…. Also they mix with the said pottage several sorts of roots, as Jerusalem artichokes, and ground nuts, and other roots, and pompions, and squashes, and also several sorts of nuts or masts, as oak-acorns, chesnuts, walnuts: These husked and dried, and powdered, they thicken their pottage therewith."— Historical Collections of the Indians, by Daniel Gookin, 1674, Boston, 1792. p. 10.
220. The character of the Indian dress, as here described, does not differ widely from that of a later period.—Vide Mourt's Relation, 1622, Dexter's ed., p. 135: Roger Williams's Key, 1643, Trumbull's ed., p. 143, et seq.; History of New England, by Edward Johnson, 1654, Poole's ed., pp. 224, 225.
Champlain's observations were made in the autumn before the approach of the winter frosts.
Thomas Morton, writing in 1632, says that the mantle which the women "use to cover their nakednesse with is much longer then that which the men use; for as the men have one Deeres skinn, the women haue two soed together at the full length, and it is so lardge that it trailes after them, like a great Ladies trane, and in time," he sportively adds, "I thinke they may have their Pages to beare them up."—New Eng. Canaan, 1632, in Force's Tracts, Vol. II, p. 23.