History of Swansea, Massachusetts, 1667-1917; - citizen hylbom blog

THE
THE INDIANS
An Agricultural People
New England tribes including the Wampanoags
were an agricultural people, cultivating corn, beans,
tobacco, squashes and other products of the soil. They
also subsisted on the wild game of the forests and the fish of
the fresh and salt waters. The Wampanoags had a rich soil to
cultivate along our rivers and Bay and obtained a plentiful
supply of fish from the waters and shores of Narragansett Bay.
Roger Wilhams speaks of the "social and loving way of
breaking up the land for planting corn. All the men, women,
and children of a neighborhood join to help speedily with theuhoes,
made of shells with wooden handles. After the land is
broken up, then the women plant and hoe the corn, beans and
vine apples called squash which are sweet and wholesome;
being a fruit like a young pumpkin, and serving also for bread
when corn is exhausted." Indian corn was the staple food,
parched, pounded to meal and mixed with water. Wmslow
speaks of a meal of corn bread called mozium, and shad roes
boiled with acorns, which he enjoyed at Namasket. Parched
meal was their reliance on their journey, and of unparched
meal they made a pottage called "nassaump," whence the
New England *' samp. " *' For winter stores the Indians gather
chestnuts, hazel-nuts, walnuts, and acorns, the latter requiring
much soaking and boiling. The walnuts they use both for
food and for obtaining an oil for their hair. Strawberries and
whortleberries were palatable food, freshly gathered, and were
dried to make savory corn bread." Strawberries were abundant
and the modern strawberry shortcake was anticipated by
the Indians in a deficious bread make by bruising strawberries
in a mortar and mixing them with meal. Summer squashes and
beans were their main dependence next to corn.
The fur-bearing animals of the forest furmshed both
food and covering for bodies and wigwams. Shell and finfish
were very abundant. Clams, oysters, quahaugs, scallops
could be obtained with little labor and the fish that now
frequent our bays and rivers were more plentiful than they
have been known to the whites. The luxury of a Rhode Island
clam bake was first enjoyed by our Indian predecessors. It
was the good fortune of the writer, in excavating the ground