Morning journal and courier., 1885-03-17
AGRICULTURE.

was attacked by a foOtpad at bridgeport sat
urday evening and lost his watch chain. The |
officer was struck a powerful blow on the
back of his neck.
AGRECULTURE.
As Conducted by the Original Inhabi- |
tants of America.
from the Boston Budget
Women were the aboriginal t'gar- -gaids''
or farmers of North America, for the savage
lords of the soil scorned tillage 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 to be cleared up Fwonne-
souam- sauke," the squaws would take their
hatchets (made of sharpened stone) and CIR
die the trees by bruising off wide circle of
the bark; 'smo-ni-e-jeeg-k wai-wag," as they
called this employment. The next spring,
twelve months after heaping 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 genera
tions, thus proving the excellence OF WOOD
ashes as fertilizer for Indian corn.
Great care was taken by the Indians to Sc
| lect for seed the best for "skamoon,"
which was their name for Indian corn, al
though they had distinct appelations for the
white, the red the yellow and the black vari-
cites, all of which they possessed, and kept
pottage fish and flesh of all sorts, either new
| taken OF dried, as shad, cells, alewives, or
kind of herring, any other 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 yenison,
bears flesh, beaver, moose, otter or raccoon,
cut in small pieces. They also mixed with
| it several sorts of roots, as Jerusalem artl-
choke and ground nuts, and other roots and
| pumpkins and squashes. Also several kinds
of masts, as oak acorks, chestnuts, walnuts
these, husked and dried and powdered,
they thickened this pottase herewith
Melons were raised in great abundance, as
were also gourds of all sizes, from the large
''calabash" that would hold two or three gal
Ions to the tiny receptacle for pigments used
in painting for war. From the sap of the
maple they made 8 coarse grained sugar,
which, when mixed with freshly pounded
Indian meal and seasoned with dry whortle-
berries, was baked into dainty dish for
high festivals. The dried meats of oli-nuts
pounded and boiled in water was their bever-
age at such feasts, and from the green wax
of the bayberry they made candles with rush
wicks, which gave clear light and yielded a
pleasant fragrance while burning. Several
varieties of beans were raised with the corn;
that the fall dish of 'musick-quatush," or
green corn, might be enjoyed. 1t was Eot,
however Qike the "succotash" of our day.,
simply composed of corn and beans, for
Goodkin tells us that ''they frequently boil
in this
s'Mishimin - in the Algonquin tongue sig
niied apple, although it is the opinion of
some learned writer's that the fruit was I'M
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
native fruits, and unless crab stocks were
found l do not clearly see how the large
orchards mentioned by the early writers
could have been made productive SO soon.
Mr.. Wolcott, q distinguished Connecticut
| magistrate, wrote in 1886 certainly not more
| than five years after this colony was first
planted) 81 made five hundred 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 undoubtedly
came from the South, and which was never
found growing wild.
| After the spring burning, when the oaks
began to leaf, the squaws would cultivate,
| OF, rather, would root Dip the fields with the
| fiat shoulder blades Of the moose, and then
| mark the future hills by making small holes
| (abcut four fest apart with rude hoe, the
blade of which was large clam shell. Into
each hole they would put an alewife, caught
| in some adjacent stream, or horseshoe crab
from the seashore, and on the stinlulant drop
| and cover half dozen grains of corn. The
land thus planted was guarded against the
II L H.
grew the earth was scraped around the stalks
with clam-shells until the hills were two feet
high, mode of culture superseded by plow-
ing, although some persist m laborlously fol
lowing it at the present day. Generally the
stalks grow six or eight feet in height, bear
ing two ears each, and we are told that there
were eight rows, containing 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, unhusked, on frames re-
sembling the fish-hakes of our time, under
which q smoldeEipg fire was kept up.
When the corn was thoroughly dried it
was husked, shelled and packed in large
birch bark boxes, which were buried in
the ground below the action of the frost.
Sometimes, when they cooked this corn, 1t
was soaked in I've until the hull came off,
then dried again, pounded in a wooden NOR
tar, 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 stone mortar and
then boiled !; ''suppaun" was the peal,
sifted through basket, which they baked
INTO cakes on flat stones. The warriors and
hunters, however, when away from home,
subsisted upon simple parched corn, sup
ply of which they carried with them. Roger
Williams speaks of having ''traveled with
near two hundred Indians at once, near one
hundred miles through the woods, every
man carrying little basket of this at his
back sufficient for one three four
days. They call it ''nocake."