He gives a description of how they made the maize into bread (or rather “dampers”, “ashcakes"); but as this is not altogether clear, it is better to combine it with Champlain’s description, written a good many years later, but still at a time when the Hurons were unaffected by the white man’s civilization.  According to both Cartier and Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees.  From this meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), which had been boiled and mashed.  Or they would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the soup blueberries,[6] dried raspberries, or pieces of deer’s fat.  The meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread, baking it in the ashes.

[Footnote 6:  The Canada Blueberry (Vaccinium canadense), called by the French blues or bluets.  These blues were collected and dried by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the winter.]

Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran, and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water, stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not adhere to the pot.  To this was added a small quantity of fish, fresh or dry, according to the season, to give a flavour to the migane or porridge.  When the dried fish was used the porridge smelt very badly in the nostrils of Europeans, but worst of all when the porridge was mixed with dried venison, which was sometimes nearly putrid!  If fish was put into this porridge it was boiled whole in the mealy water, then taken out without any attempt to remove the fins, scales, or entrails, and the whole of the boiled fish was pounded up and put back into the porridge.  Sometimes a great birch-bark “kettle” would be filled with water, fish, and meat, and red-hot stones be dropped in till it boiled.  Then with a spoon they would collect from the surface the fat and oil arising from the fish or meat.  This they afterwards mixed with the meal of roasted Indian corn, stirring it with this fat till they had made a thick soup.  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.”