Beyond Jamestown - Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

Anthropologists have called the Piedmont area of Virginia the
“supermarket” of the Native world, because such diversity of edible
plants could be found in the meadows, marshes, forests, and fallow fields. Not only did these wild plants provide
variety, but because the corn harvest did not always last until the next season, the Indians depended on naturally
growing foods. According to early colonists, the Powhatan could only store enough corn, beans, and squash to last for
about half of the year. The most difficult time was late spring and early summer, before the fields yielded crops and
before the berries, nuts, and grapes had ripened. Native women were expert horticulturists, identifying and gathering
dozens of species of plants, berries, nuts and roots that would feed their families in those lean months and spreading
the seeds of those plants for subsequent seasons.
Summertime brought a wealth of delicacies. Grapes, blackberries, raspberries,
strawberries and blueberries grew abundantly in Virginia, thriving in exhausted corn
fields and along sunny paths. Red mulberry and persimmon trees were so valued for their
fruit that sometimes the Native people would build their homes near the trees. Because
the mulberries ripened about the same time as the corn and beans, the women would boil
them all together in a stew. Wild onions, native garlic (ramps) and other greens were also
used for seasoning.
In the fall, Indians would gather nuts such as acorn, walnut (bitter pecan), hickory,
chinquapin and chestnut. The job of using a mortar and pestle to crack open the nuts often fell to the children. White
oak acorns were popular for their nutritional value. Nut meats were often processed to make oil, flour and a type of
milk. “Walnut milk” was highly prized as a delicacy. Even the shells were used – boiling them to remove tannin to tan
leather and to produce dyes.
Flour was made from an assortment of seeds, roots, and
grain. Corn flour was abundant throughout the winter, but
when it was not available, the seeds of wild grasses or the
rhizomes (root system) of the tuckahoe plant were also
used.
SOL: 2.2, VS 2(e)
Gathering
27
According to English accounts,
mattoume -– a Powhatan bread
made from wild grass seeds-- was
best when buttered with deer fat.