This section is from the book "The Book Of Camp-Lore And Woodcraft", by Dan Beard. Also available from Amazon: The Book of Camp-Lore and Woodcraft.
When I was a little shaver in old Kentucky, the children were very fond of the Southern field corn parched in a frying pan (Fig. 161), and then buttered and salted while it was still hot; we parched field corn, sugar corn and the regular pop corn, but none of us had ever seen cracked corn or corn meal parched and used as food, and I am inclined to think that the old pioneers themselves parched the corn as did their direct descendants in Kentucky, and that said corn was crushed or ground after it had been parched. Be this as it may, we know that our bordermen traveled and fought on a parched corn diet and that Somoset, Massasoit, Pocahontas, Okekankano, Powhatan, all ate corn cakes and that it was either them or the squaws of their tribes who taught bold Captain Smith's people on the southern coast, and the Pilgrims further north, the value of corn as an article of diet. The knowledge of how to make the various kinds of corn bread and the use of corn generally from "roasting-ears" to corn puddings was gained from the American Indians. It was from them we learned how to make the
 
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