352 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETH]SrOLO<5Y [Bull. 137 



before the Fire, in the Ear. For the sake of this Dyet, which they love 

 exceedingly, they are very careful to procure all the several sorts of Indian 

 Corn before mentioned, by which means they contrive to prolong their Season. 

 (Beverley, 1705, bk. 3, p. 15.) 



The late varieties of corn were eaten in this way only after the 

 annual ceremony usually called the "green corn dance," the busk 

 of the Creeks, had been celebrated. 



Catesby informs us that 



Indians .... are often without corn, (and from the same negligent prin- 

 ciple) when they have it, they are often without bread, contenting themselves 

 with eating the grain whole, after being softened by boiling it with their 

 meat. (Catesby, 1731-43, vol. 2, p. x.) 



Ears of corn were also dried and preserved for winter use : 



They also reserve that corne late planted that will not ripe, by roasting 

 it in hot ashes, the heat thereof drying it. In winter they esteeme it being 

 boyled with beans for a rare dish, they call Pausarowmena. (Smith, Tyler ed., 

 1907, p. 95). 



Strachey (1849, p. 72) repeats the statement, and notes that the 

 stalks when gathered green were sucked for the sugar they con- 

 tained. 



A staple dish throughout the Southeast was that known to the 

 Creeks as sofki. It corresponded, in part at least, to the hominy 

 of the Algonquians and the atole of the Mexicans and came to the 

 knowledge of the French under the name sagamite, an Algonquian 

 word but not applied by Algonquians to this food. Apparently it 

 covered dishes made in somewhat different ways. The sofki with 

 which I am acquainted was made either of kernels of corn deprived 

 of their skins by means of lye and similar to what we used to call 

 "hulled corn" or of kernels broken into coarse pieces in a wooden 

 mortar, cleared of skins and then boiled. I do not remember to have 

 seen any made out of finely pounded grain, but it would correspond 

 very well with the following dish described by Smith : 



The grouts and peeces of the cornes remaining, by fanning in a Platter or 

 in the wind away the branne, they boile 3 or 4 houres with water; which is 

 an ordinary food they call Ustatahamen. (Smith, Tyler ed., 1907, p. 96.) 



Strachey restates this as follows: 



The growtes and broken pieces of the corne remayning, they likewise pre- 

 serve, and by fannying away the branne or huskes in a platter or in the wynd, 

 they lett boyle in an earthen pott three or four howres, and thereof make a 

 straung thick pottage, which they call Vsketehamun, and is their kind of 

 frumentry, and indeed is like our kind of ptisane, husked barley sodden in 

 water. (Strachey, 1849, p. 73.) 



They add that some Indians went so far as to burn the corncob to 

 powder and mix it with their meal, but remark that it never tasted 



