Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/64

40 and for obtaining an oil for their hair. Strawberries and whortleberries were palatable food, freshly gathered, and were dried to make savory corn bread." Strawberries were abundant and the modern strawberry shortcake was anticipated by the Indians in a delicious bread made by bruising strawberries in a mortar and mixing them with meal. Summer squashes and beans were their main dependence next to corn.

The fur-bearing animals of the forests furnished both food and covering for bodies and wigwams. Shell and fin-fish were very abundant. Clams, oysters, quahaugs, scallops could be obtained with little labor and the fish that now frequent our bays and rivers were more plentiful than they have been known to the whites. The luxury of a Rhode Island clam bake was first enjoyed by our Indian predecessors. It was the good fortune of the writer, in excavating the ground for a cellar at Drownville to exhume an oven, used for baking clams, about eighteen inches below the surface of the soil. The coals and shells on the saucershaped oven of round stones were evidences of aboriginal use and customs.

The women cultivated the crops for the most part and were the burden bearers of the fish and game taken by the men. "A husband," says Williams, "will leave a deer to be eaten by the wolves rather than impose the load on his own shoulders. The mothers carry about their infant pappooses, wrapped in a beaver skin and tied to a board two feet long and one foot broad, with its feet hauled up to its back. The mother carries about with her, the pappoose when only three or four days old, even when she goes to the clam beds and paddles in the cold water for clams. It is evident that in their wild state, no large number of them could subsist long together, because game on which they principally lived, was soon exhausted, and hunger compelled them to scatter. This state of existence always forced them to live in small clans or families. Venison and fish were dried and smoked for winter's supplies. In providing the