296 BUREAU or AMEKICAN ETHNOLOOY [Bull. 137 



DISCUSSION 



We are plainly dealing with one economic province. Several 

 species of corn, beans, peas, and squashes or pumpkins, including 

 gourds from the genus Ciumrhita, were cultivated in all parts of it 

 except in southern Florida which, as already remarked, should really 

 have belonged to the West Indian province but was left a kind of 

 economic no man's land by failure to introduce manioc. The result 

 was that it had no cultivated plants at all in purely aboriginal times. 

 The province most closely resembling it was the Chitimacha country, 

 and it is perhaps significant that we do not seem to have a clear 

 record of the use there, in prehistoric times, of beans, peas, and 

 squashes, but this may be owing in part to the early displacement 

 of these plants by rice, melons, and other food plants better suited 

 to the country. More light upon the ancient condition of this region 

 is urgently needed. 



There were three principal varieties of corn: the little corn of 

 the nature of popcorn, which was first to mature ; the flint or hominy 

 corn, the kernels of which were hard and smooth and were, of vari- 

 ous colors — white, yellow, red, and blue; and the flour or dent corn 

 with corrugated kernels. Bread was made of tenest of the flour corn ; 

 it was the most valued and it seems to have been the time of its matu- 

 rity which determined the occurrence of the green corn dance. I have 

 seen some flint corn raised among the Choctaw which was mottled 

 white and blue, and a number of years ago I remember some large 

 ears of flour corn brought back by Mr. Mooney from the Cherokee. 

 These were white mottled with a deep pink. 



Sunflowers seem to have been cultivated generally. In the north- 

 eastern Algonquian section a kind of "orache" is said to have been 

 raised as a salt substitute. 



The wild vegetable products were also much the same. Ground- 

 nuts {Apios tuberosa) , wild sweetpotatoes, several varieties of Smilax 

 (kantak), Angelico roots, persimmons, plums, grapes, strawberries, 

 mulberries, blackberries, some varieties of huckleberries, wild rice, 

 the seed of a species of cane, chestnuts, walnuts, hickory nuts, acorns, 

 particularly those of the live oak, and chinquapins must have been 

 used in nearly all sections, though it is strange that blackberries are 

 so seldom mentioned by name. The Virginia wakerobin {Peltandra 

 virginica), floating arum, or whatever other plant was used for 

 tuckahoe bread, seems to have been confined to the Northeast. The 

 prickleypear, crab apple, wild pea, tree huckleberry, gooseberry, 

 cherry, and serviceberry are mentioned only in the Algonquian or 

 eastern Siouan sections. The blue palmetto is referred to in southern 

 sections, as might have been expected; a pond lily, Nelumho lutea, 



