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Negro houses are small, built of rough materials, and no floor. Their food was three pecks of potatoes per week, in the potatoe season, and one peck of corn the remainder of the year. The slaves carried with them into the field their meal, and a gourd of water. They cooked their hommony in the field, and ate it with a wooden paddle. Their treatment was little better than that of brutes.
But they are kept short, and I think are oftener whipped for stealing something to eat than any other crime. On plantations their food is principally hommony, as the southerners call it. It is simply cracked corn boiled. This probably constitutes seven-eights of their living.
Is there such a thing as bear's meat, or a mouthful of hommony, in the wigwam?" Had the voice of one, long known to be in the grave, broken on the ears of the family, it would scarcely have produced a deeper sensation, or have quickened the blood more violently about their hearts, than this sudden and utterly unexpected discovery of the character of their captive.
Weston, "you'se not worth de hommony you eats." "Does you hear that, master?" said Bacchus, appealing to Mr. Weston; "she's such an old fool." "Hold your tongue, sir," said Mr. Weston; while Mark, ready to strangle his fellow-servant for his impertinence, was endeavoring to drag him out of the room. "Ha, ha," said Peggy, "so much for Mr. Bacchus going to barbecues. A nice waiter he makes."
The dinner-table, to which we now come, and which two or three negroes have been busily employed in cumbering with well-filled plates and dishes, was most plentifully furnished; though but few of its contents could properly be classed under the head of delicacies. There were eggs and ham, hot biscuits, hommony, milk, marmalade, venison, Johnny, or journey cakes, and dried fruits stewed.
This is all that good or bad masters allow their slaves round about Savannah on the plantations. One peck of gourd-seed corn is to be measured out to each slave once every week. With this, they made a soup in a large iron kettle, around which the hands came at meal-time, and dipping out the soup, would mix it with their hommony, and eat it as though it were a feast.
The following course was taken, Two crotched sticks were driven down at one end of the yard, and a small pole being laid on the crotches, they swung a large iron kettle on the middle of the pole; then made up a fire under the kettle and boiled the hommony; when ready, the hands were called around this kettle with their wooden plates and spoons.
Overcome by the exertion of walking, and by agitation, she sunk down exhausted by the road side was taken up, and carried back to the house, where an abortion occurred, and her life was greatly jeoparded. "It was no uncommon sight to see a whole family, father, mother, and from two to five children, collected together around their piggin of hommony, or pail of potatoes, watched by the overseer.
The custom was to blow the horn early in the morning, as a signal for the hands to rise and go to work, when commenced; they continued work until about eleven o'clock, A.M., when, at the signal, all hands left off and went into their huts, made their fires, made their corn-meal into hommony or cake, ate it, and went to work again at the signal of the horn, and worked until night, or until their tasks were done.
They have no manufactures but what each family makes for its own use; they seem to despise working for hire, and spend their time chiefly in hunting and war; but plant corn enough for the support of their families and the strangers that come to visit them. Their food, instead of bread, is flour of Indian corn boiled, and seasoned like hasty-pudding, and this called hommony.
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