"Memoirs of a Captivity Among the Indians of North America"

The squaws raise for the consumption of their families, corn, tobacco, pumpkins, squashes, melons, gourds, beans, peas, and, within a few years past, potatoes in small quantities. They collect hazel nuts, hickory nuts, walnuts, chesnuts, pecca nuts, grass, or ground nuts, various kinds of acorns, wild liquorice, sweet myrrh, or anise root, and Pash-e-quah, a large bulbous root somewhat resembling the sweet potatoe in form, and very similar to the chesnut in flavour, though more juicy.

They also collect, in their seasons, crab and may-apples, Osage oranges, three or four kinds of plums, strawberries, gooseberries, whortleberries, black and dew-berries, and a great variety of grapes.

All their various products, as well as those of the chase, are, in general, distributed in proportion to the members of each family concerned in their acquirement; though sometimes no distribution takes place, but all draw, as they want, from the supplying source, as a common reservoir, till it is exhausted.

Whenever a scarcity prevails, they reciprocally lend, or rather share with each other, their respective stores, till they are all exhausted.