BY BREAD ALONE?
What did early settlers here in Virginia have to eat?
Did they actually partake of the glamorous items we see listed in some magazines from time-to-time? Only on rare occasions, could they, even the so-called upper crust of society, the plantation owners, leading merchants and others such groups, actually dine with multiple courses of fine meats, seafoods, fowls, fine desserts and unlimited beverages? I doubt such meals were ever common, and we would have to agree that, by and large, the pioneer diet was dull, tiresome, often tasteless and at times inadequate.
It is quite evident that large amounts of corn were consumed in various forms:such as in cakes, pones, mush, flat breads, bread sticks, round, square and yard- long bread creations or corn which had been parched or even raw, plus boiled, roasted, baked, even “popped”, if only accident with certain types of corn and, of course, made into beverages of various strengths and intensities.
Wapatoo was an Indian good which settler came to find useful. The white men adopted the Indian food and variations of their name for it. Among themselves hey spoke of “duck potatoes” which we, today, call arrowroot We do not think of it as a food,but rather as a decorate wildflower we find along freshwater streams. They are found in pounds, marshes and lakes – even in more northerly areas, and may grow four inches to several feet high. They have olive green, striped leaves which point skyward in the shaped of an arrow head. They are listed in the fancy books as sagittaria latifolia for you botanically-minded people.
The lower leaves of the arrowroot plant usually grow just under the water line. They are grass-like in appearance always with pointed ends. The arrowroot blooms are white and about l-1/2 wide. There are three whorls, unisexual by nature, and with abilities to attract insects. The dragonfly is the chief pollinator of Arrowroot, as they are for Pickeralweed, a plant which has leaves which are rounded, and it resembles the arrowroot plant to the disadvantage of all concerned.
The tuber-like root of the Arrowroot plant was important in its time regardless of its name in any given area. The Lewis and Clark expedition found Indian women harvesting what they called “Wapotoo” in the Columbia River in 1805. The squaws waded into the water and broke the tubers from the plant roots with their toes, we are told.. Seventy five varieties of arrowroot have been classified. Fifteen types of ducks still love them just as the Indians and early white settlers did.
Closer to home, the plant gave a lasting name to an entire group of people from eastern Virginia. In 1610-11 Jamestown was in dire straits for food. A census of the pigs and poultry indicated that it would be wise for sixty to eighty of the settlers too move down river where they could live on seafoods and oysters. In the Old Point area, sturgeon was plentiful at that time and when dried, mixed with roe and sorrel it could be made into a flour providing both bread and meat. The well-known authority on Colonial homemaking, Annie Cash Jester wrote: “an edible root similar to a potato was gathered, pounded Indian-fashion to a meal from which bread was made.”
Those Jamestown settlers who had shipped downstream to stay alive, came to be known as people who ate Indian “Tockwaugh” - hence they became know as “Tuckahoes”.
A.L.M. March 19, 2003 [c583wds]
