Indians, we manured our ground with Herings or rather Shadds, which we haue in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doores.” Edward Winslow[1] says:
The seed-time beginneth in midst of Aprill, and continueth good till the midst of May. . . . Mays, which our Indians call Ewachim, . . . will not be procured without good labour and diligence, especially at seed-time, when it must also be watched by night to keepe the Wolues from the fish, till it be rotten, which will be in foureteene dayes; yet men agreeing together, and taking their turnes it is not much.
Concerning the inexhaustible supply of fish for their purposes, George E. Ellis[2] remarks:
The alewives were abundant, not only in the Taunton river, but probably in all the rivers along the coast. The early settlers speak of the great quantities of them in the two rivers at Plymouth; and a brook running into the Mystic, near Harvard College, is still called Alewife brook.”
Roger Williams[3] gives still further details of interest concerning the Indians and their corn fields.
From thick warme vallies, where they winter, they remove a little neerer to their Summer fields; when ’tis warme Spring, then they remove to their fields where they plant Corne. In middle of Summer, because of the abundance of Fleas, which the dust of the house breeds, they will flie and remove on a sudden from one part of their field to a fresh place: And sometimes having fields a mile or two, or many miles asunder, when the worke of one field is over, they remove house to the other. [Crows were a nuisance, then as now.] Against the Birds the Indians are very carefull, both to set their corne deep enough that it may have a strong root, not so apt to be pluckt up, (yet not too deep, lest they bury it, and it never come up:) as also they put up little watch-houses in the middle of their fields, in which they, or their biggest children lodge, and earely in the morning prevent the Birds. . . . The Women set or plant, weede, and hill, and gather and barne all the corne, and Fruites of the field. . . . When a field is to be broken up, they have a very loving sociable speedy way to dispatch it: All the neighbours men and Women, forty, fifty, a hundred &c, joyne, and come in to help freely. With friendly joyning they break up their fields. . . . The Indian Women to this day (notwithstanding our Howes, doe use their naturall Howes of shells and Wood.”
Most of the descriptions thus far given speak of the hills either as being “scattered over the surface with the greatest irregularity,”
- ↑ Good Newes from New England, 1624, p. 62.
- ↑ The Red Man, 1882, p. 175.
- ↑ A Key into the Language of America, 1643, pp. 37, 46, 89, 100, 101.
