The woods contain many sassafras trees, some of large size. Sassafras roots were one of the first important exports back to England for the Pilgrims. The roots make good tasting tea. The trees have fall foliage of bright colors. In Colonial days, bedsteads were made of sassafras wood, believed to protect against vermin. Champlain carried back sassafras to France as a cure for venereal diseases.[3] Hornbeams, related to the ironwood family, have a structural form suggesting that of some Japanese trees. Their red, brown and yellow foliage in early fall long before frost is a pleasant sight. The settlers considered them good for fence post material. Related European trees were used for yoking oxen and possibly the word beam and horn are concerned with oxen.[4] On the floor of the woods made soft by deep layers of pine needles moccasin flowers, called pink lady slippers, of the orchid family are found frequently. One past spring I found a cluster of perhaps fifty pink lady slippers in bloom in one small area and had a pleasure that reminded me of Wordsworth and his host of daffodils. Starflowers, of the primrose family and wild lily of the valley fill the deep pine grove near the house in May. In late August the woods are full of ivory Indian pipes. They burst up through the pine needle floor like a mushroom. This plant is without green and has a wax-like appearance and yellow flowers inside the pipe. It has mutual parasites in its structure and gets nourishment from decaying organic matter in the shade. With abundant moisture they greatly increase in number. The Indians sometimes used them for eye lotion. In season, other wildflowers around here are campion, cinquefoil, devil’s paint brush, blue-eyed grass, purple asters, goldenrod, milkweed, wild lettuce and asparagus, pink mullein, and lion’s foot. There is a large clump of wild roses. There are yarrow, indigo, and yellow dog tooth and white and blue violets and in September the purple gerardia, a member of the snapdragon family. On the pond shores grow species of orchis, hyssop, lobelias, and the seven angled pipewort and sundews. Many wildflowers grow here that I have not mentioned, but you can see that there is a moveable feast of flowers. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. THE INDIANS Reference has been made to Indians in the South Pond area and the name “Kamesit” which they are said to have given the region. Miss Catherine Marten of Plimoth Plantation has written a scholarly monograph called _The Wampanoags in the Seventeenth Century_, dated December, 1970, an extensive ethnography of these Indian people of the coastal area of Southern New England at the time of Massasoit.