Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1898 — CORN MEAL IN OLDEN TIMES. [ARTICLE]

CORN MEAL IN OLDEN TIMES.

Colonial Methods of Preparing It—Bow Samp Waa Made. The colonists quickly learned from the Indiana to harvest, grind, and cook the corn in many palatable ways. And the foods made from maize have remained to this day the names given by the aborigines, such as hominy, pone, suppawn, samp, succotash. Samp ana samp porridge were soon favorite dishes. Samp is Indian corn pounded to a coarsely ground powder in a mortar. The laborious Indian method of preparing maize for consumption was to steep It in hot water for 12 hours* then to pound the grain in a mortar till it was a coarse meal. It was then sifted in a small basket* and the Urge grains which did not pass through the primitive sieve were again pounded and sifted. > Samp was often pounded in aprimit tive and picturesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed block of wood or a stump of a tree. The pestle was a heavy block of wood shapeddike the interior of the mortar ana fitted with a handle attached to one side. This block was fastened to the. top of a growing sapling, which was bent over and thus acquired the required spring back after the Mode or pestle was Bounded down-on the qpnk. Popnd-

mg samp waa slow worjt, orteo acne master years by unskilled negroes, goring” com. After those simple spring-mortars were abandoned elsewhere they were used on Long Island, and it was jestingly told that skippers in a fog could always get their waring off the Long Island coast because they could hear the pounding of the samp mortars-—Alioe Morse Earle, in Chautauqnan. < . -run 1 .1 >