Springfield globe-republic. (Springfield, Ohio) 1884-1887, 1885-03-01
AGRICULTURE.
AS CONDUCTED BY THE ORIGINAL
INHABITANTS OF AMERICA.
Women the First Farmers of Our Country
How They Conducted the business
Products of the Soil Under
Primitive Culture.
Boston Budget

or farmers, of North America, for the saw
age lords of the soil scorned tilage as does
a modern shop boy, and passed their time in
fighting or in fishing, although they never
refused to eat the product Of the soil When
a new field was 10 be cleared up in "wonne-
squam-sauke," the squaws would take their
batchers tmade of sharpenei stone) and
girde the trees by bruising off a wide circle
of the bark; mo ME -jeeg-kwai-w wag," as
they called this employment. The next
spring, twelve months after hesping dry
limbs and leaves around the decayed trunks,
they would apply fire, and while the flames
consumed the dead giants of the forest, and
the heat killed the roots of the underbrush,
the ashes would leave the soil mellow and in
fine heat A field thus titled would be used
by generations thus proving the excellence
OF wood ashes as a fertilizer for Indian corn
Great care was taken by the Indians to
select for seed the best ear for "skamoon,n
which was their name for indian corn, al
though they had distinct appelations for
the white the red, the yellow, and the black
varieties, all OF which they possessed, and
kept pottage fish and flesh of all sorts,
either new taken or dried, as shad, eels, ale
wives. or a kind of herring, or any ether
sort of fish. But they dried mostly those
sorts before mentioned These they cut in
pieces, bones and all, and boiled them in the
aforesaid pOttage. Also, they boiled in this
fermenty all sorts of flesh taken in hunting
as venison, bears flesh, beaver, moose, otter,
or raccoon cut in small pieces. They also
mixed with it several sorts of roots,
Jerusalem artichoke and ground nuts, and
other roots and pumpkins and squashes.
Also several kinds of mastS as oak acorns,
chestnuts walnuts-these, husked and dried
ID
herewith"
Melons were raised in great abundance, as
were also gourds of all sizes, from the large
"calabash" that would hold two or three
gallons to the tiny receptacle for pigments
used in painting for war. From the sap of
the maple they made a coarse grained sugar,
which, when mixed with freshly pounded
Indian meal and seasoned with dry whortle-
berries, was baked into a dainty dish for
high festivals The dried meats Of oil-nuts
pounded and boiled in water, was their bev-
erage at such feasts, and from the green
wax OF the bayberry they made candles
with rush wicks, which gave clear light,
and yielded pleasant fragrance while burn
ing Several varieties of beans were raised
with the corn; that the fall dish Of "musick-
quatush," or green corn, might be enjoyed
1t was not, however Qike the ~succotash" of
our day, simply composed of corn and
beans, for Goodkin tells US that they fire.
quently boil III this
"Mishimin," in the Algonquin tongue, sig
nified apple, although it is the opinion of
some learned writers that the fruit was un-
known before the arrival of Europeans. l
have in my possession, however, several old
printed compilations of early voyagers, each
of which reckons apples among the early
frpi md ,,pla
found l do not clearly see how the large
orchards mentioned by the early writers
could have been made productive so soon.
Mr.. Wolcott, a distinguished Connecticut
magistrate. wrote in 1855 certainly not
more than five years after this colony was
first planted: Il made 500 hogsheads of
cider out of my own orchard in one year"
This would have been almost impossible had
he been obliged to raise his orchard from
seed, or even had he carried trees of such
size as could have been transported through
the trackless wilderness. The apple may not
be indigenous to the soil OF New England,
and yet the Indians may have possessed it,
as they did Indian corn, which unioubte dly
came from the south, and which was never
found growing wild.
After the spring burning, when the oaks
began 20 leaf, the squcws would cultivate,
or, rather, would root up the fields with the
fiat shouider-blades of the moose, and then
mark the future hills by making small
holes about four feet apart with rude hoe,
the blade Of which was large clam saell
Into each hole they would put an alewife,
caught in some adjacent stream, or a horse
shoe crab from the seashore, AMI on the
stimulant drop and cover a half dozen grains
of corn. The land thus planted was guarded
the danrai oft of the birds and
as the corn grew, the earth was scraped
around the stalks with clam-shells until the
hills were TWO feet high, a mode Of culture
superseded by plowin , although some per.
sist in laboriou,ly following it at the present
day. Generally the stalks grow six or eight
feet in height, bearing two ears each, and
We are told that there were eight rows con
tanning thirty grains or over, on an ear
Early in September the ears were plucked,
leaving the stalks and leaves to enrich the
ground, and were carried in backbaskets to
their wigwams. There the corn was placed,
urlhusked, on frames resembling the fish
fakes of our time under which smolder-
ing FIRE was kept up.
When the corn was thoroughly dried i
was husked, shelled and packed in large
birch bark boxes, which We're buried in the
ground below the action of the frost Some
times, when they cooked this corn, II wa
soaked in lye until the hull came off, then
dried again, pounded in a wooden mortar,
and called -nausamp," which was boiled
with venison fat and bit of dried salmon
to give it flavor "Omonee" was the dried
corn simply cracked in a stone mortar and
and then boiled; "suppaun' was the corn
meal, sifted through a basket, which they
baked into cakes on fiat stones. The war
riors and hunters, however, when away
away from home, subsisted upon simple
parched corn, supply of which they car
ried with them Roger Williams speaks of
having Travelled with near 3O0 Indians at
once, nea4, 100 miles tarough the woods,
every man carrying little basket Of this at
his back, sufficient for one man three or
four days They call it "nocake,"
HOW TO PREVENT FIRES.