this she would plant four or five grains of corn, putting them about
an inch apart. Then she covered these grains with soft earth. In
Virginia, where the ground was soft and sandy, the Indians made a kind
of spade out of wood.

Sometimes they planted a patch a long way off from their bark house,
so that they would not be tempted to eat it while it was green. The
Indians were very fond of green corn. They roasted the ears in the
ashes. Some of the tribes held a great feast when the first green corn
was fit to eat, and some of them worshiped a spirit that they called
the "Spirit of the Corn."

When the corn was dry, the Indians pounded it in order to make meal or
hominy of it. Sometimes they parched the corn, and then pounded it
into meal. They carried this parched meal with them when they went
hunting and when they went to war. They could eat it with a little
water, without stopping to cook it. They called it Nokick, but the
white people called it No-cake.

When the Pilgrims came to Cape Cod, they sent out Miles Standish and
some other men to look through the country and find a good place for
them to settle. Standish tried to find some of the Indians in order to
make friends with them, but the Indians ran away whenever they saw him
coming. One day he found a heap of sand. He knew it had been lately
piled up, because he could see the marks of hands on the sand where
the Indians had patted it down. Standish and his men dug up this heap.
They soon came to a little old basket full of Indian corn. When they
had dug further, they found a very large new basket full of fine corn
which had been lately gathered.