The diet of the Wampanoags, because of their seasonal cycle of
resource use, varied considerably. While many kinds of food were
preserved for use beyond their season by drying, the supply was
probably not so great that the diet was identical throughout the
year, if only in terms of the relative quantities of the kinds of
food eaten. The diet of the Wampanoags included several varieties of
land animals,[113] of which deer were probably the most important.
Fresh and salt water fish, shellfish, fowl, and marine mammals, such
as were available, were also eaten. Corn, beans, and cucurbits,
which they raised, plus various wild nuts, roots, and fruits made
up the vegetable part of the diet. While there is evidence that the
Indians in Maine used maple sugar, there seems to have been none
used in southeastern New England aboriginally.[114] Altogether,
according to Bennett, who has made a study of the diet of the
Indians of southeastern New England, the Indian diet included more
vegetable products than the diet of Europeans living in the same area
today.[115]
Squashes came to replace corn as the dietary mainstay in the late
summer.[116] Clams seem to have been dug in all seasons of the year;
they are spoken of as a food to which the Wampanoags turned when
other sources of food dwindled.[117] Acorns were also a food turned
to when the preferred diet was scarce, although sometimes they were
eaten when there was plenty of corn, as a novelty item.[118] Writing
of a visit to the Plymouth area in June, Martin Pring noted that the
food the Indians were eating at that time of the year was mostly
fish.[119]
There is not a great deal known about Wampanoag eating habits,
but some general impressions can be put together. Morton tells us
that “... they feede continually”.[120] Wood, on the other hand,
notes that it was “... their fashion to eate all at some times,
and sometimes nothing at all in two or three dayes....”[121] The
apparent contradiction is probably the result of the two observers
looking at different sets of cultural circumstances. When there was
food available in abundance, everyone probably ate, according to
his wishes, out of the stew pot at any time. There were also formal
meals held on at least the following occasions: when a guest arrived
(_i.e._ visiting Englishman) and when groups would gather for games
and dances. Wood gives a description of what such a “sit-down” meal
was like:
... dishing it up in a rude manner, placing it on the verdant
carpet of the earth which Nature spreads them, without either
trenchers, napkins, or knives, upon which their hunger-sawced
stomacks impatient of delayes fals aboard without scrupling
at unwashed hands, without bread, salt or beere: Lolling on
the Turkish fashion, not ceasing till their full bellies leave
nothing but emptie platters ... eating three or foure cornes with
a mouthfull of fish or flesh, sometimes eating meate first, and
cornes after, filling chinkes with their broth ... At home they
will eate till their bellies stand forth ready to split with
fullness....[122]
At this type of meal the men ate, and the women waited upon them,
being paid by the favor of a bite from time to time.[123] Eating was
done from individual wooden bowls, with fingers or spoon, depending
upon the consistency of the food.[124]
When one was away from home on a journey and not near enough to any
settlement to go there for hospitality, he ate from his pouch of
parched corn meal. This might be eaten quickly if he were in a hurry
to be off again, by gulping down three spoonfuls of corn meal with
some water. A more leisurely meal was one for which the traveler took
the trouble to build a fire and cook the meal to eat it hot.[125]
Food seems to have been shared liberally with anyone who was around
when people were eating, no matter what it was or how much there was
at the time.[126]
Diet was one area in which the arrival of the Europeans seems not to
have had much influence. Composition of the diet remained the same as
it was aboriginally until the time of King Philip’s War.[127]