“Girl,” he cried, “let me have the broth this was boiled in!”
“The squash was roasted in the ashes; it has no broth,” answered the girl who had handed it to him.
The blind man laughed. “I thought it was boiled in a pot,” he said.
I judge from this story that several squashes had been roasted, and that the blind man got one as his share.
Storing the Unused Seed Squashes
It was our custom to remove to our winter village in the mida´-pạx´di widi´c, or leaf-turn-yellow moon; it corresponds about to October. I remember the leaves used to be falling from the trees while we were working about our winter lodges, getting ready for cold weather.
When moving time came in the fall, any squashes left over in the lodge, uneaten, were stored in a cache pit until spring. But it was a difficult thing to store these squashes so that they would keep sound; and when spring came many of them would be found to have rotted. Some families were more careful in making ready and storing their cache pits than were others. Squashes kept best when stored in carefully prepared pits.
On the family’s return the next spring the cache pit was opened; and the squashes that had kept sound could be used for cooking, and their seeds could be planted. The number thus stored over winter was not large.
The seeds of rotted squashes were just as good to plant as were the seeds of the sound squashes.