INDIANS HUNTING GAME.
The variety of fish caught by the Indians was also very large. "Higher up at the falls of the great rivers they used to take salmon, shad, and alewives, that used in great quantities, more than cartloads, in the spring, to pass up into the fresh-water ponds and lakes." "In March, April, May, and half June," says John Smith, "here is cod in abundance; in May, June, July, and August, mullet and sturgeon; herring, if any desire them; I have taken many." Again he writes of whales, grampuses, hake, haddock, mackerel, sharks, cunners, bass, perch, eels, crabs, lobsters, mussels, and oysters.
We may also divide vegetable food into two classes—that which nature provides without the aid of man, or wild vegetables, and that which requires cultivation, or cultivated vegetables. Many forms of nuts, berries and fruits, and some forms of common ground vegetables grow wild. The red men found these in great abundance.
John Smith found in New England currants, mulberries, gooseberries, plums, walnuts, chestnuts, and strawberries, besides other fruits of which he did not know the names. He made a journey up the Potomac River, and reported that the hills yielded no less plenty and variety of fruit than the river furnished abundance of fish.
Smith also described acorns whose bark was white and sweetish; he added that these acorns, when boiled, afforded a sweet oil that the red men kept in gourds to anoint their heads and joints. The Indians also ate the fruit of this acorn, made into bread. There were plums of three kinds and cherries. Smith discovered also a great abundance of vines "that climb the tops of the highest trees in some places. Where they are not overshadowed from the sun, they are covered with fruit, though never pruned nor manured."
Hunting and fishing are carried on in much the same way to-day as they were centuries ago. The gun has taken the place of the bow and arrow, and fishing implements have been somewhat improved. But to capture and kill is now, as formerly, all that is needed to obtain this form of food, if the wild animals themselves can be found. Wild vegetables may be gathered to-day in just the way that our ancestors gathered them, though they are not found in so great quantities because of the increase of cultivation. In studying the changes in the modes of living that have occurred in this country during the last three hundred years, we find that almost all the improvements in the production of food have been in the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of food, and the bringing it to market.