The Woodsman's Journal Online: Samp...mmm...Good!©

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It’s almost Thanksgiving, the time to give thanks to family and friends, and for Natures bounty. So let’s talk about a historic Native American food, that is still commonly eaten food today, something that was probably on that first Thanksgiving table...Samp!

Most of my readers are probably wondering, “Samp? What’s samp?” Native American samp is a delicious dish made of dried corn (maize, for my European readers). The name for this food originates from the Narragansett word ‘nasáump’ but it was anglicized and known as ‘samp’ by the early colonists of America.

Historically samp was the daily gruel, the technical name for any cereal grain boiled in water or milk, which sustained the agricultural Northeastern and Southeastern Native Americans cultures. In the United States it is sometimes also known as ‘mush’, though a narrow definition of mush, refers to a pudding or porridge made of corn/maize, and not samp.

But before we can talk recipes, first we must talk corn and corn meal and the many ways it was prepared by Native Americans before the European arrived. Native Americans cooked with fresh (green) mashed corn or dried and ground corn. The dried corn kernels could either be ash-treated, roasted/parched or simply dried before being stone ground or pounded and cracked with a mortar and pestle.

Unlike today where most commonly grown type of corn, is ‘dent’ or ‘field corn’, historically Native Americans grew what is known today as ‘flint’ or ‘Indian’ corn. Unlike dent corn, zea mays indentata, which has a higher soft starch content, causing the kernel to indent as it dries; flint corn, zea mays indurate, has a hard flint-like shiny kernel made up of a outer layer of hard starch, protecting an inner layer of softer starch, making it more difficult to mill, but more resistant to storage pests, such as insects or rodents.

Traditionally samp was made with ash-treated or nixtamalized (corn treated with any alkaline solution) flint corn kernels. By ash-treating their corn, Native Americans created ‘rockamominy’, an anglicized version of the Virginia Algonquian word, ‘rokahamĕn’, which later morphed into moder word ‘hominy’ referring to corn kernels treated with an alkali to remove the hull. By treating their corn in this way, they improved the taste and texture of the resulting grain and avoided pellagra, a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin B3 (niacin), common in diets of mostly untreated corn. Making corn into hominy increases its nutritional value for humans, since humans are unable to easily digest corn as it is. Treating the corn kernels with lye and softened or slipped the pericarp, or hull, from the kernel, and helped to make the grain more digestible to humans. releasing lysine and tryptophan amino acids, and the hemicellulose-bound niacin.

By tradition hominy corn was cooked into a porridge or soup with the addition of whatever you had at hand, like common beans, such as kidney, navy, pinto, lima or cranberry beans, various roots, squash and/or fresh or dried meat, fish, shellfish, or after the arrival of the Europeans, pork.

Bon appétit!

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That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

Sources

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Diemer-Eaton, Jessica; Sofkee and Samp: Staple Dishes of the Eastern Woodlands, 2016, http://woodlandindianedu.com/sofkeeandsamp.html#:~:text=Haudenosaunee/Iroquois%20samp%20was%20(and,%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D%2D, accessed November 22, 2025

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