Editorial and Opinion CPage
Along the Robeson Trail
by Dr. Stan Knick, Director
PSU Native American Resource Center
(Author's Note: This is the eleventh
in a series of articles about contact
between English colonists and early
Algonkian Indians in coastal North
Carolina, based on the writings of
Barlowe in 1584, Lane in 1585-86
and Harriot in 1587.)
Last week we began to look at
Harriot's 1587 descriptions of the
Native Americans themselves ? their
physical appearance and the clothing
they wore. Harriot apparently only
encountered coastal Algonkian people
(and not the more inland Eastern
Siouan and Iroquoian people), but his
descriptions are the best we have of
any Native people in the Carolinas in
the sixteenth century. This week we
turn to some of the customs of these
early Native Carolinians.
Harriot spends a lot of time
writing about the variety of foods which
the people ate ? meat and fish and
. fowl, vegetables and fruits, tubers, nuts,
seeds and herbs. But how did they
cook their food?
"Their women know how to make
earthen vessels with special cunning,
and...so large and fine that our potters
with...wheels can make ho better: and
then remove them from place to place
as easily as we can do our brass kettles.
After they have set them upon a heap
of earth to stay them from falling, they
put wood under, which being kindled,
one of them taketh great care that the
fire burn equally round about.
' They...fill the vessel with water, and
then put in fruit, flesh and fish and let
. all boil together.... Then they putitoul
into dishes, and set before the
company, and then they make good
. . - . ' \ ' -
cheer together.... Their manner of
feeding is in this wise. They lay a
mat. .on the ground and set their [food]
on the midst thereof, and then sitdown
-.round, the men upon one side and the
women on the other.... They are very
sober in their eating and drinking, and
consequently very long lived because
they do not oppress nature." John
White's drawing of this cooking
method shows a pottery vessel at least
two feet high and almost as wide
(vessels of this size have been
recovered from archaeological sites in
the Southeast).
Being coastal people, these
Algonkians ate a great deal of fish.
Their method of fishing was so
unusual to Harriot and the other
Englishmen that he described in detail
how it was done: "They have...a
notable way to catch fish in their
rivers, for whereas they lack both iron
and steel, they fasten onto their reeds
or long rods the hollow tail [spike] of
a certain fish...[as] a point, wherewith
by night or day they strike fishes and
take them up into their boats.... They
also make weirs, with setting up reeds
or twigs in the water, which they so
plantone within another that they grow
still narrower and narrower.... There
was never seen among us so cunning a
way to take fish, whereof sundry sorts
they found in their rivers unlike unto
ours.... It is a pleasant sight to see the
people, sometimes wading, and going
sometimes sailing in those rivers,
which are shallow and not deep, free
: from all care of heaping up riches...
content with their stale, and livin{
i friendly together off those things whicl
I God of His bounty hath given unt<
them....
"After they have taken store of
fish, they get them unto a place fit to
dress it. There they stick up in the
ground four stakes in a square...and
lay four poles upon them, and others
[poles] over...the same like unto a
hurdle [a wickerwork rack]..., and
laying their fish upon this hurdle, they
make a fire underneath to broil the
same. .. And when as the hurdle
cannot hold all the fishes, they hang
the rest by the fire on sticks set up in
the ground.... They take good heed
that they be not burnt. When the first
are broiled, they lay others on that
were newly brought...until they...have
sufficient"
White's drawing of this activity
(reproduced in the engravings of
Theodor de Bry) shows Indian men
carrying large baskets full of large fish
to the broiling rack. His drawing of the
actual fishing process shows people
spear-fishing from canoes as well as
some wading, while others collect fish
from weirs. Even though these
descriptions are of Algonkians, we
' can safely assume that other Native
Carolinians of the period used similar
methods of taking, and cooking, their
food. In comparison to the war-torn
Europe of the time, the lives of these
Indian people ("free from all care of
heaping up riches") must have seemed
to Harriot something like a garden of
[ Eden.
, * In the next segment, we will look
t at more customs of these early Native
, people. For more information, visit
5 the Native American Resource Center
1 in Old Main Building, on the campus
> of Pembroke State University.
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OKLAHOMA C77T-Orncials of
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