J7O NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



In the course of boiling some of the meal on the outside of the 

 cake comes off, together with a quantity of starch and gluten, and 

 mixes with the water. When the bread is sufficiently cooked this 

 liquid is poured out in bowls and drunk as a tea. The Iroquois 

 considered this gruel a great delicacy. 



Fig. 1 6 Bark tray containing boiled bread, dried. Specimens J actual size. Seneca 

 specimens collected 1908 



Corn bread is fairly hard but readily crumbles when masticated. 

 It is not dry, but moist and mealy. Before eating the cake it is 

 sliced and spread with tallow or butter, bear or deer oil. It is a 

 delicious food and considered highly nutritious. Often cooked 

 cranberry beans or berries were mixed with the meal before boiling. 

 These added to the flavor as well as nourishment. 1 



One of the best descriptions of boiled bread has been left us by 

 Adair 2 who writes: 



They have another sort of boiled bread which is mixed with beans 

 or potatoes ; they put on the soft corn till it begins to boil and pound 

 it sufficiently fine ; their invention does not reach the use of any 

 kind of milk. When the flour is stirred, and dried by the heat of 

 the sun or fire, they sift it with sieves of different sizes, curiously 

 made of the coarser or finer cane splinters. The thin cakes mixt with 

 bear's oil, were formerly baked on thin broad stones placed over a 

 fire, or on broad earthen bottoms fit for such a use, but now they use 

 kettles. When they intend to bake great loaves, they make a strong 



1 " Some of the loaves were baked with nuts and dry blue berries and 

 grains of the sunflower." Van Curler's Diary, p. gi. 



2 Adair. History of the American Indians. Lond. 1775. p. 407. See also 

 Boyle. Ontario Arch'. Rep't 1898. p. 188. 



