The most bountiful source of food grew beside the lakes and ponds and in the swampy wetlands. Water plants were their major source of sustenance. They gathered the seeds of the pickerel weed to make bread and mush and dug in the nearly frozen mud for cattail and arrowhead roots. They could continue harvesting the starchy tubers well into the winter, but once the ice became too thick to break they'd have to turn to their last line of defense in staving off starvation, eating tree bark.
Grated cattail roots can make some good, if slightly odd tasting, bicuits.
