be gathered, the women and children entered the fields with hand-baskets manufactured from hemp, the bark of trees, or the blades of the maize stalk; the ears as they were pulled were cast into these receptacles, whose contents were afterwards poured into still larger baskets,[1] which in turn were emptied on mats that had been placed in the sun, the maize being left there to dry thoroughly. At night it was collected into large piles, over which the mats were drawn to protect the grain from dew. When the maize had seasoned, the shucks were stripped from the ears, the grain rubbed from the husks, and subsequently deposited in long baskets in houses built especially for the purpose.[2] In some instances, in its final state, it was concealed by the heads of families, the women and children being kept ignorant of the locality in the forest in which it was buried, but the inconvenience of such an arrangement would appear sufficient to have made it exceptional.[3]
If the Indians had been scattered over the face of the country, their fields of maize would hardly have been noticeable, but as these fields were concentrated for the most part on navigable streams,[4] the English were led rather to exaggerate than to underrate
- ↑ Spelman’s Relation of Virginia, p. cxii.
- ↑ The question has been raised as to whether the maize was stored away before or after the grain was removed from the cob. See article by Dr. Edward Eggleston in the Century Magazine for April, 1894. It would be inferred from the following passage in Spelman’s Relation of Virginia, p. cxii, that the grain was “shelled” before it was placed in the baskets which formed the final receptacles: “When the corn is sufficiently weathered, they pile it up in ther howses, dayly as occation serveth wringinge the cares in peises betwene ther hands and so rubbinge out the corne, do put it into a great baskett.” It will be observed that it was the ear and not the “huske” which the Indians wrung in “peises.”
- ↑ Strachey’s Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 113.
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 67.
