362 BUREAU OF AMEKICAX ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



holes, which were to serve as mortars, a pestle made of some hard wood had 

 been furnished. 



The first step in the process was to reduce the washed Koonti to a kind of 

 pulp. This was done by chopping it into small pieces and filling with it one 

 of the mortars and pounding it with a pestle. The contents of the mortar were 

 then laid upon a small platform. Each worker had a platform. When a 

 sufficient quantity of the root had been pounded the whole mass was taken 

 to the creek near by and thoroughly saturated with water in a vessel made 

 of bark. 



The pulp was then washed in a straining cloth, the starch of the Koonti 

 draining into a deer hide suspended below. 



When the starch had been thoroughly washed from the mass the latter was 

 thrown away, and the starchy sediment in the water in the deer skin left to 

 ferment. After some days the sediment was taken from the water and spread 

 upon palmetto leaves to dry. When dried, it was a yellowish white flour, 

 ready for use. In the factory at Miami substantially this process is followed, 

 the chief variation from it being that the Koonti is passed through several 

 successive fermentations, thereby making it purer and whiter than the Indian 

 product. Improved appliances for the manufacture are used by the white man. 



The Koonti bread, as I saw it among the Indians, was of a bright orange 

 color, and rather insipid, though not unpleasant to the taste. It was saltless. 

 Its yellow color was owing to the fact that the flour had had but one fermenta- 

 tion. (MacCauley, 1887, pp. 513-516.) 



Adair and Romans speak of the substitution of wild potatoes for 

 bread, and the former adds that boiled potatoes were eaten mixed 

 with bear's oil (Adair, 1775, p. 437). Hariot mentions a root, which 

 seems to have been that of the wild sweetpotato, eaten raw or some- 

 times with fish or flesh. Groundnuts (Apios tuberosa) were "boiled 

 or sodden". A plant cultivated in North Carolina and called melden, 

 "a kind of orage," was eaten in the form of a broth or pottage besides 

 being used as a salt. The Dioscorea villosa ( f) roots and the Ligus- 

 ticum canadense roots were boiled with other meats in the same region. 

 The seed of a plant called Mettoume in Virginia, probably wild rice, 

 was used for "a dainty bread buttered with deere suet." (See Hariot, 

 1893, p. 91.) The Creeks prepared a cake from the pulp of the passi- 

 flora or maypop (Romans, 1775, p. 94). Nelumbo seeds were made 

 into a bread along with corn flour (Adair, 1775, p. 410), and in 

 Louisiana at least a bread or porridge was prepared from the inter- 

 mittent seed of a species of cane (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, vol. 2, 

 pp. 58-59; Swanton, 1911, p. 76). 



Tuckahoe bread appears to have been confined to the northeastern 

 Algonquian sections and some of the adjacent Siouan territory. We 

 have two good descriptions of the method in which it was prepared. 

 To requote Hariot : 



Being dressed according to the countrey mauer, it maketh a good bread, and 

 also a good sponemeate, and is vsed very much by the inhabitants : The iuce of 

 this root is poison, and therefore heede must be taken before any thing be 

 made therewithal : Either the rootes must bee first sliced and dried in the 



