Sometimes, however, they were content to eat the young corn-cobs freshly roasted, which as a matter of fact (with a little salt) is one of the most delicious things in the world.
Or they would take ears of Indian corn and bury them in wet mud, leaving them thus for two or three months; then the cobs would be removed and the rotted grain eaten with meat and fish, though it was all muddy and smelt horribly.

Cartier also noticed that these Huron Indians had melons and pumpkins, and described their wampum or shell money.[7] [Footnote 7: Cartier, in Hakluyt's translation, is made to say (I modernize the spelling): "They dig their grounds with certain pieces of wood as big as half a sword, on which ground groweth their corn, which they call 'offici'; it is as big as our small peason....

They have also great store of musk melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers, peas, and beans of every colour, yet differing from ours." Wampum, or shell money (which recalls the shell money of the Pacific Islands), consisted either of beads made from the interior parts of sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells.

The most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally white.

The commoner wampum beads were black and violet.