Indian Slapjacks

“We had a splendid breakfast,” Hawthorne wrote in his American Notebooks, “of flapjacks, or slapjacks, and whortleberries.” A batter thin enough to be poured on a griddle, rather than shaped into hoecakes or johnnycakes, was called indiscriminately “flap”, “slap,” or “flatjacks,” sometimes “flips” or “slappers,” and eventually “pancakes,” “flannel cakes,” “flatcars,” and “sweatpads.” There is no end of names, any more than an end to the stack of cakes