OF THEIR COOKERY AND FOOD.

§ 14. Their cookery has nothing commendable in it, but that it is performed with little trouble. They have no other sauce but a good stomach, which they seldom want. They boil, broil, or toast all the meat they eat, and it is very common with them to boil fish as well as flesh with their homony; this is Indian corn soaked, broken in a mortar, husked, and then boiled in water over a gentle fire for ten or twelve hours, to the consistence of frumenty: the thin of this is what my Lord Bacon calls cream of maise, and highly commends for an excellent sort of nutriment.

They have two ways of broiling, viz., one by laying the meat itself upon the coals, the other by laying it upon sticks raised upon forks at some distance above the live coals, which heats more gently, and dries up the gravy; this they, and we also from them, call barbecueing.

They skin and paunch all sorts of quadrupeds; they draw and pluck their fowl; but their fish they dress with their scales on, without gutting; but in eating they leave the scales, entrails and bones to be thrown away. They also roast their fish upon a hot hearth, covering them with hot ashes and coals, then take them out, the scales and skin they strip clean off, so they eat the flesh, leaving the bones and entrails to be thrown away.

They never serve up different sorts of victuals in one dish; as roast and boiled fish and flesh; but always serve them up in several vessels.

They bake their bread either in cakes before the fire, or in loaves on a warm hearth, covering the loaf first with leaves, then with warm ashes, and afterwards with coals over all.

Tab. IX. Represents the manner of their roasting and barbecueing, with the form of their baskets for common uses, and carrying fish.

§ 15. Their food is fish and flesh of all sorts, and that which participates of both; as the beaver, a small kind of turtle, or terrapins, (as we call them,) and several species of snakes. They likewise eat grubs, the nymphÆ of wasps, some kinds of scarabÆi, cicadÆ, &c. These last are such as are sold in the markets of Fess, and such as the Arabians, Lybians, Parthians and Æthiopians commonly eat; so that these are not a new diet, though a very slender one; and we are informed that St. John was dieted upon locusts and wild honey.

They make excellent broth of the head and umbles of a deer, which they put into the pot all bloody. This seems to resemble the jus nigrum of the Spartans, made with the blood and bowels of a hare. They eat not the brains with the head, but dry them and reserve them to dress their leather with.

They eat all sorts of peas, beans, and other pulse, both parched and boiled. They make their bread of the Indian corn, wild oats, or the seed of the sunflower. But when they eat their bread, they eat it alone, and not with their meat.

They have no salt among them, but for seasoning use the ashes of hickory, stickweed, or some other wood or plant affording a salt ash.

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.

Tab. X. Is a man and his wife at dinner.

All other matters in this figure are understood by the foregoing and following descriptions.