The pumpkin has sturdily kept its own place on the New England farm, varying in popularity and use, but always of value as easy of growth, easy of cooking, and easy to keep in a dried form. Yet the colonists did not welcome the pumpkin with eagerness, even in times of great want. They were justly rebuked for their indifference and dislike by Johnson in his _Wonder-working Providence_, who called the pumpkin "a fruit which the Lord fed his people with till corn and cattle increased"; and another pumpkin-lover referred to "the times wherein old Pompion was a saint." One colonial poet gives the golden vegetable this tribute:-- "We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone." I am very sure were I living on dried corn and scant shell-fish, as the Pilgrims were forced to do, I should have turned with delight to "pompion-sause" as a change of diet. Stewed pumpkins and pumpkin bread were coarse ways of using the fruit for food. Pumpkin bread--made of half Indian meal--was not very pleasing in appearance. A traveller in 1704 called it an "awkward food." It is eaten in Connecticut to this day. The Indians dried pumpkins and strung them for winter use, and the colonists followed the Indian custom. In Virginia pumpkins were equally plentiful and useful. Ralph Hamor, in his _True Discourse_, says they grew in such abundance that a hundred were often observed to spring from one seed. The Virginia Indians boiled beans, peas, corn, and pumpkins together, and the colonists liked the dish. In the trying times at "James-Citty," the plentiful pumpkins played a great part in providing food-supplies for the starving Virginians. Squashes were also native vegetables. The name is Indian. To show the wonderful and varied way in which the English spelt Indian names let me tell you that Roger Williams called them askutasquashes; the Puritan minister Higginson, squantersquashes; the traveller Josselyn, squontorsquashes, and the historian Wood, isquoukersquashes.