THE ABORIGINES. 89 



This corn, or ewachim* as Governor Winslow tells us the 

 Indians call it, is a most remarkable cereal. No other 

 grain yields as much for the labor expended, and none can 

 be so easily garnered as the large ears full of this luscious 

 grain. It is food when green as well as when ripe, and the 

 leaves of it make useful mats for Indian homes. One of 

 the misfortunes to the crop which rouses the wrath of the 

 female farmers is the pillaging by wolves at seedtime. 

 These hungry beasts, prowling across a cornfield just 

 planted, sniff the fish in the ground and dig them out for a 

 savory meal ; so that a night watch is sometimes posted for 

 about two weeks until the fish have rotted. Through the 

 long lazy summer its growth is protected from the crows 

 and the wild turkeys. The season draws to its end. 

 During the hot days the Indians about the Cove are doz- 

 ing in the shade of bushes or bathing in the tide or pad- 

 dling out in their canoes to where their fish nets are set, 

 or going on a visit to some friend among the Massachu- 

 setts to the north, or the Wampanoags to the south. 



At night, after the last meal has been devoured, fish, 

 berries, corn cake, clams, lobsters, whatever the women of 

 the household have been able to make ready, the evening 

 campfires cast a glow upon a group of red faces that shine 

 with social enjoyment and with grease. Young braves 

 banter each other until peals of laughter burst upon the 

 evening air, or they plan some escapade for the morrow, 

 or they growl over the misfortunes of the day, until nature 

 lays them low in sleep while the silent tide creeps in and 

 out. 



In the fall of the year they gather bunches of swamp 

 milkweed {Asclepias incarnata), which has a tough fiber 

 just inside the bark, from which their hemp is spun into 

 threads, fish lines, and ropes. Their skill is praised by Wil- 

 liam Wood, writing in 1671, who says : " Their cordage is so 



* Good News from New England, Gov. E. Winslow, in Arber's Story of Pilgrim 

 Fathers, p. 594. 



