12 
Vegetal Foods 
Agricultural products, for which there was abundant fertile land, and 
native wild fruits, seeds, and nuts were used as food. Implements for the 
cultivation of the soil, or for gathering of plant foods, were not found, 
unless some of the large, mattock-like antler objects, described under 
“ Problematical Objects,” were used as blades for hoes. 
Although pine bark, elm bark, and partly carbonized birch bark were 
found, the abundance of animal bones and agricultural products suggests 
that the people here were never reduced to the necessity of eating bark, 
as among other tribes in times of famine (Parker, 2:104). 
The use of wild fruits and nuts for food is suggested by the presence 
of fruit pits and three varieties of nuts. There is a single carbonized pit 
of a wild plum ( Prunus nigra ) , but the fruit of another variety (P. ameri - 
canus) was probably also used, as trees of this species, as well as P. nigra , 
are growing on the site at the present time, and both are known to be 
protected by modern Iroquois. There is also a pit of either the choke-cherry 
or wild black cherry. The nuts consist of a beechnut and a butternut, both 
partly carbonized, and two hazel nuts, which may be either those of Corylus 
americana or C. rostrata. There is a clump of the latter species at the edge 
of refuse deposit 1, in which the nuts were found, and so they may have 
been introduced into the heap recently. A seed, possibly of the vetch 
(Vicia americana), was found with the skeleton of a child (No. 46 1 ). 
The agricultural products consist of corn, beans, squash seeds, and sun- 
flower seeds. 
Corn was here, as among the Iroquois generally, the favourite vegetal 
food. Carbonized parts of stalks, roots, a few ears with husks intact, and 
even one retaining the floss or silk, many cobs, and many loose kernels 
were found, the latter, especially, in nearly all of the refuse deposits, but 
nowhere in masses suggesting ground caches. Judging from the rounded 
grains, some of the corn was sweet corn and some is probably of the starchy 
kind called bread corn by the modern Iroquois, possibly one of the flint 
varieties. Some of the grains are about the size of popcorn kernels, but the 
tips are not pointed, so they may be end grains of other varieties. The 
largest grains of what is probably flint corn are about ^ by £§ inch in 
diameter, and those that are probably bread corn to by inch. The 
cobs (Plate XVIII, figures 1 and 2) are small, the longest whole cob being 
only 2f inches long, and they vary in diameter at the base from \ inch 
to ItJ- inches. 2 A fragment of an ear, with part of the grains still in 
place, was about 1^% inches in diameter. Most of them are oval in cross- 
section and a few are irregularly angular. They bore from four to twelve 
rows of kernels, but the majority had six, eight, ten, or twelve rows. The 
diameter of the cobs did not seem to bear any relation to the number of 
1 See “Details of Burials”, p. 118, and Map 1599. 
^The cobs from the site of Hochelaga also are small, two specimens (No. 68, Gravel collection, Museum ol the 
Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Society, Chateau de Ramezay, Montreal) each had four rows of kernels. 
Dawson (3: 157), speaking of the com found at this site says: “I have evidence that the variety of corn cultivated at 
Hochelaga. three hundred years ago. was similar to one of the early varieties cultivated still in Canada.” Judging 
from the size of the cobs found at Roebuck, Hochelaga, at Iroquois sites in New York (Harrington 4:225), and sites 
of other cultures in Ohio (Mills, 3:34) and Kentucky (Smith, 1: 180), all the corn grown by the Indians of north- 
eastern North America probably had small cobs. 
