122 USES GF PLANTS BY INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 33 
Watermelous are cultivated in great plenty in the English and French- 
American colonies, and there is hardly a peasant here who has not a field 
planted with them. ... The Indians plant great quantities of watermelons 
at present, but whether they have done it of old is not easily determined. 
For an old Onidoe Indian (of the six Iroquese Nations) assured me that the 
Indians did not know watermelons before the Europeans came into the 
country and communicated them to the Indians. The French, on the other 
hand, have assured me that the Illinois Indians have had abundance of this 
fruit, when the French first came to them, and that they declare, they had 
planted them since times immemorial. However, I do not remember having 
read that the Europeans, who first came to North America, mention the 
watermelons in speaking of the dishes of the Indians of that time.’ 
After several miles of marching along extensive and well-cultivated fields of 
squashes, pumpkins, beans, melons, and corn the Dragoons reached the village. 
Here then was the Toyash or Pawnee Pict village, the main goal of this ex- 
pedition. . . . Col. Dodge encamped in a fine position about a mile from the 
village, and the hungry Dragoons were soon enjoying the Indian hospitalities. 
Dishes of corn and beans dressed with buffalo fat were placed before them. 
For dessert the soldiers enjoyed liberal supplies of watermelons and wild plums.* 
When Garces was among the Yumas in 1775 they were raising “countless” 
calabashes and melons—calabazas y melones—perhaps better translated 
squashes and cantaloupes, or pumpkins and muskmelons. The Piman and Yuman 
tribes cultivated a full assortment of cucurbitaceous plants, not always easy to 
identify by their old Spanish names. The Sandia was the watermelon invari- 
ably ; the melon, usually a muskmelon, or cantaloupe; the calabaza, a calabash, 
gourd, pumpkin, or squash of some sort, including one large, rough kind like 
our crook-neck squash.” ® 
MELONS AMONG THE NATCHEZ 
Father Petit in a letter to Father d’Avauguor, from New Orleans, 
July 12, 1730, writes, “Each year the people assemble to plant one 
vast field with Indian corn, beans, pumpkins, and melons, and then 
again they collect in the same way to gather the harvest.” 4 
The vegetables they [the Iroquois] cultivate most are Maize, or Turkey corn, 
French beans, gourds, and melons. They have a sort of gourd smaller than 
ours, and which taste much of sugar [squashes]; they boil them whole in water, 
or roast them under the ashes, and so eat them without any other preparation. 
The Indians were acquainted, before our arrival in their country, with the com- 
mon and water melon.® 
Toute sorte de Melons croissent 4 souhait dans la Louisiane; ceux d’Espagne, 
de France, et les melons Anglois, que l’on nomme melons blanes, y son infiniment 
meilleurs que dans les Pays dont ils portent le nom: mais les plus excellens de 
tous sont les melons d’eau. Comme ils sont peu connus en France, of l’on n’en 
voit guéres que dans la Provence, encore sont-ils de la petite espéce, je crois que 
lon ne donne trouvera point mauvais que j’en la description. 
1Kalm, Travels into North America, vol. 2, p.,385. 
2 Pelzer, Henry Dodge, p. 100. 
®* Russell, The Pima Indians, p. 91. 
4 Jesuit Relations, vol. 68, p. 137. 
5 Charlevoix, Journal of a Voyage to North America, vol. 1, p. 250. 
