THE POTATO — S AFFORD 513 



England. His oponawk was not a Solanum, but Glycine apios, a 

 tuber-bearing legiuninoiis plant not even remotely related to tlie 

 Solanaceae. 



The tubers of Glycine apios were an important food staple of all 

 the Indian tribes of eastern North America from the Gulf of 

 Mexico to the St. Lawrence River. By the English colonies they 

 were called Indian potatoes, bog potatoes, or ground nuts. By the 

 settlers of New France the}'^ were called "chapelcts," or rosary 

 roots, from their bead-like arrangements on strings. The various 

 tribes of Indians had each its vernacular name for them. " Open- 

 awk," "openaug," "penag," or "penac," were their Algonquin 

 names. 



This name has come down to us in a variety of forms, according 

 to the orthography of carl}^ writers. Strachey, in his account of 

 the Jamestown Indians, called it " ouhpunnank " ; according to 

 Zeisberger, its Delaware name was "hobbenac"; Peter Kalm gives 

 its diminutive form " hopnis " (hope7iis), which may be trans- 

 lated " those small roots." At the time of his visit the Swedish 

 colonists still called it by its Indian name. In his description of 

 the plant he says: "The roots resemble potatoes and were boiled 

 by the Indians, who eat them instead of bread. Some of the 

 Swedes at that time likewise ate this root for want of bread. 

 Some of the English still eat them instead of potatoes. Mr. Bar- 

 tram told me that the Indians, who live farther in the country, not 

 only eat these roots, Avhich are equal in goodness to potatoes, but 

 likewise gather the peas which lie in the pods of the plant and 

 prepare them like common peas." ^ 



In early accounts of the settlement of New England these pota- 

 toes, called ground nuts, were the chief reliance of the colonists in 

 times of scarcity. In the personal narrative of Mrs. Mary Eow- 

 landson, the wife of a clergyman, taken captive by the Indians 

 during King Philip's War, she refers frequently to ground nuts, 

 which she characterizes as the principal wild food staple of the 

 Indians.® They were eaten either boiled, roasted, made into cakes, 

 or added to broth of meal made of the bark of a tree.^° 



The Abbe Provancher ^^ gives the Quebec name of the ground nut 

 as penac, without the prefix. The early missionaries of New France, 



8 Kalm, Peter. Travels in North America. London. 1772. See Pinkerton'.s Voyages, 

 13:533. 1812. 



9 " Tbeir chief and commone.st food was ground nuts ; they eat also nuts and acorns, 

 artichokes, lily roots, ground beans [Fulcdn comosa, now usually called hog peanuts], 

 and several other weeds and roots that I know not." — Narrative of the captivity of Mrs. 

 Mary Rowlandson, wife of the Rev. Joseph Rowlandson, who was taken prisoner when 

 Lancaster (Mass.) was destroyed in the year 1676; written by herself. In Indian 

 Captivities, by Samuel G. Drake, p. 54. 1851. 



'"Op. cit., p. 38. 



" Frovanchcr, Al>b(5 L. Floro Canadionne, lo-l. 1862. 



