the field of
science, Dr. Robb, Dr. Gesner and Moses H. Perley. The relics most
commonly brought to light include stone implements, such as axes,
hammers, arrow heads, lance and spear heads, gouges and chisels, celts
or wedges, corn crushers, and pipes; also bone implements such as
needles, fish hooks and harpoons, with specimens of rude pottery.

When Champlain first visited our shores the savages had nothing better
than stone axes to use in clearing their lands. It is to their credit
that with such rude implements they contrived to hack down the trees
and, after burning the branches and trunk, planted their corn among
the stumps and in the course of time took out the roots. In
cultivating the soil they used an implement of very hard wood, shaped
like a spade, and their method of raising corn, as described by
Champlain, was exactly the same as that of our farmers today. The corn
fields at the old Medoctic Fort were cultivated by the Indians many
years before the coming of the whites. Cadillac, writing in 1693,
says: "The Maliseets are well shaped and tolerably warlike; they
attend to the cultivation of the soil and grow the most beautiful
Indian corn; their fort is at Medocktek." Many other choice spots
along the St. John river were tilled in very early times, including,
probably, the site of the old Government House at Fredericton, where
there was an Indian encampment long before the place was dreamed of as
the site of the seat of government of the province.

Lescarbot, the historian, who wrote In 1610, tells us that the Indians
were accustomed to pound their corn in a mortar (probably of wood) in
order to reduce it to meal. Of this they afterwards made a paste,
which was baked between two stones heated at the fire. Frequently the
corn was roasted on the ear. Yet another method is thus described by
the English captive, John Gyles, who lived as a captive with the St.
John river Indians in 1689: "To dry the corn when in the milk, they
gather it in large kettles and boil it on the ears till it is pretty
hard, then shell it from the cob with clam shells and dry it on bark
in the sun. When it is thoroughly dry a kernel is no bigger than a
pea, and will keep years; and when it is boiled again it swells as
large as when on the ear and tastes incomparably sweeter than other
corn. When we had gathered our corn and dried it in the way described,
we put some of it into Indian barns, that is into hole in the ground
lined and co