In another thread that seems to have died out, I mentioned that I had never seen any Indian pottery when I lived in Massachusetts. Last night I found a site that told why. The New England aborigines did indeed have pottery, but their technology was sadly deficient. They apparently did not know how to get high enough temperatures to cause clay to vitrify, and so their pots were very fragile, and disintegrated rapidly. I have been to several archaeologic digs, and never heard pottery mentioned. Only tiny pieces are to be found.
The same site mentioned corn being soaked until it was soft, and then pounded in large bowl-like structures made by using fire to hollow out hardwood stumps, from which charred wood was scraped. The soaked corn was then pounded with a large hard wood pestle. It was such a frequent activity, that boats in fog could use the sound to tell them when they were close to shore.
The pounded product was called "samp" and was often slowly cooked into a porridge.

Dr bill isn't samp just the northern word for grits?

in the Heavy (silver Pig) thread-- CK mentioned that corn is hard to digest--

Modern sweet corn is only marginaly hard to digest (but is sure made me ill when i was pregnant!)

but indian corn or field corn is very hard to digest-- the hull of the kernal resist stomach acids.. one way around this, is to soak the corn in a mild lye solution, which desolves the hull, and at the same time changes the protein into a more readily digested form--Hominy

both grits and samp are forms of hominy. and after being processed, both are cooked again with hot water to make a sort of mush (which is a word that sounds awful, but a good mush is so good!)

an other way around this, is to dry the corn and grind it.. but the hulls are so hard, that without power grinding, (wind or water) the calories expended in hand grinding the corn are more than you take in.. making it a net loss..

still it was done, and ground corn was cooked into a mush too.. today its commonly called polenta (oh yet an other word on the theme of the week!) but it was also cooked with molasses, and if done in an open pot, it became a hasty pudding-- left overs reappeared as anadama bread..(a bread made of hasty puding and wheat flour)

one more way to get past the husk and to the protein and starch in the kernal was to fry them.. Pop corn!
i heard that a kind of pop corn was used as breakfast food.

Unlike modern popcorn, all selected for having the right moisture level to pop big and white, the fried corn was not so big and fluffy, and the popped kernals where cooked again in liquid.. the popping was to burst the husk-- and make it easier to get to the protein inside.

(and while this is verging on being a food thread, there is hominy, and anadama, and samp and lots of other good words...)

You want to say it, TEd, or should I?

All you calumniators of "grits", beware, the ASp will get you.

If you want to make fun of Philadelphia scrapple, I'll join you.

No need for high-tech clay working in New England. If you wanted a hard bowl, you could use a piece of granite to carve out a sandstone bowl, pestle, or whatever. New England grows one thing well - rocks. ;-) Thus speaks a (originally native) Connecticut-an (-er? -ite?).

You are only wretched and unworthy if you choose to be.

Dear Bryan: As I said, they did use crude stone mortars and pestles. But to make ceramic cooking vessels, you have to know how to get the high temperatures to turn the clay into ceramic. I have seen a potter make very nice stuff in a large pit covered except for slanting channel so wood could be added until sufficient charcoal formed. Air could enter through wood channel, and a vertical flue in center to let smoke out with adequate draft.
I don't know how he judged when interior was hot enough, but then both wood entrance channel and flue were stopped up and left for a couple days. There was nothing he did that the Indians could not have done if they had known the procedure.

And of course, scrapple is related to samp and polenta, being made of corn mush with ground-up pieces and scraps from the slaughter of a hog (as my father used to say, the ears, eyeballs, assholes and elbows) mixed in. It comes in molded pieces about the size of a brick and is sliced and fried. This is one of the quintessential Pa. Dutch dishes and although I am Pa. Dutch myself, I can't stand the stuff. It looks, tastes and smells like fried garbage (which it is).

hominy: You want to say it, TEd, or should I?
missed your chance, TEd.

At the first Thanksgiving feast, the Indians brought fresh venison, native roots, and a thick chowder of hominy grits and peas. As both main ingredients of that chowder preserved well in dried form, the chowder recipe became something of a staple of the diet of the pilgrims over the next winter -- when little fresh food was available -- as it had long been for the Indians.

Thus it was that the two races learned to live together in [drumroll] peas and hominy.

Thus it was that the two races learned to live together in [drumroll] peas and hominy.

Are drumrolls concurrent with firing squads? Just curious.

And were the Indians from the five nations that Andrew Jackson, that human and all-round mensch, sent on a 1,500 mile walking holiday to Oklahoma in winter?

If you want to make fun of Philadelphia scrapple, I'll join you.

Well, no wonder you don't like scrapple! The only things Philadelphians know how to make properly are cheesesteaks. If you want good scrapple, you have to come to Berks County.
Of course, you probably think "good scrapple" is a contradiction in terms.