Wild
Nuts, Fruits, Vegetables, and Eggs: Women
and children gathered wild nuts, fruits and vegetables, mushrooms, and
eggs laid by birds and turtles.
They gathered sunflowers to use to
make sunflower oil, which they used to fry food. They also used
sunflower oil to treat wounds and as a body lotion to protect their
skin from hot or cold weather.
Maple
Syrup: The Iroquois
learned to tap maple trees to harvest maple syrup. The Iroquois had a
quite a sweet tooth. They loved maple sugar in many foods. They made a
special treat of heated nuts rolled in maple sugar.
Wild
Game: The men
usually left in the fall for the annual hunt. They used bow and arrows
to kill black bear, elk, deer, rabbit, and wolves. They trapped wild
turkey, ducks and other birds. They hunted turtles for their food and
shells. No part of the animal was wasted.
They did not eat raw food.
They cooked everything they captured. Whatever the men
brought back from the hunt was shared by the whole village.
Fish:
Spring was fishing season. The men used huge nets to
catch fish. When the brought the catch back, everyone in the village
pitched in the help dry the fish over fires. Much of the catch would
be dried and then stored.
If the store of food was getting low,
the men would go out at night with torches. The light attracted fish
into their nets. Everyone in the village got busy drying and storing
dried fish.
