SUMAC: Grow Your Own Spice©

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sumac, za'atar

I love to experiment with new spices especially one I can plant and have it return year after year for my endless enjoyment.  My most recent venture into the land of perennial foods is sumac.  No, I’m not talking about the poisonous version that gives many people a rash.  There are poisonous and non-poisonous varieties of sumac.  Steer clear of varieties that bear white seed and don’t chance it if the plant is not producing and there is no indication of berry color.  Sumac is related to poison oak and  poison ivy and they grow in the same type terrain.

A. Doolittle of Painesville, Ohio described sumac berries as, “sour, very, very sour”, with seeds of “pure cussedness” yet in some cultures processed sumac berries are an indispensible spice. They predate the Roman introduction of lemons into Europe and native Americans used them in a number of ways.

Indians and colonists alike used the staghorn sumac to make tea and a cooling liquid later called sumac “lemonade”.  There is a variety of sumac in the western U.S. known as lemonade sumac because it was so commonly used to make the beverage.

Gary Paul Nabhan has stated he prefers the red ripe berries of lemonade sumac to stale Middle Eastern spice and Tama Matsuoka Wong says staghorn sumac is less toasty and more citrusy than smooth sumac (also red drupes).  “It even retains its red color when dried, providing an appetizing pop of color when sprinkled over foods with insipid hues of beige and cream”.

“Staghorn sumac, Dwarf sumac, as well as Smooth sumac may all be used; however, be certain that you are gathering densely clustered berry-like RED fruits, not the white ones of poison sumac”.  Staghorn sumac has bristly hairs on the drupes and branches.  It is native to North America.

Middle Eastern countries enjoyed the flavor of sumac as much as the American Indians having gathered wild red sumac for countless generations.

  

Sumac is mixed with other ingredients, usually sesame seeds and thyme, to make a spice called za’atar.

Edible varieties, “all have red berries”.  “The acid berries of these shrubs [sumac] are eaten by Indians and occasionally by whites, and a rather pleasant beverage can be made from at least some of them.  Their slender twigs are very important in basketry work among the Indians…”.

Elias Yanovsky wrote that the Indians crushed the fruit to make cooling drinks, ate the fruit, and peeled fresh roots which were eaten raw.  He documented the drying of the fruit for use in winter.

Numerous sources note Native Americans combined sumac with tobacco for smoking and settlers and hunters took up the practice as well.  Blends called kinnikinnick were prepared in a myriad of ways.  The blends sometimes included the inner bark of dogwood, bearberry, and even poke leaves.   As late as the early 20^th century, the practice continued.  One magazine published a claim saying smoking the dried leaves would relieve the symptoms of asthma.  “Gather the green leaves while fresh, dry them, and smoke in a common clay pipe”.

During the late Victorian era into the early 20^th century sumac gathering helped ease the financial burden for many country families.  Men, women, and children would camp out, pulling sumac leaves by day and singing, playing music, telling stories, or visiting about the campfire as supper cooked in the evening.  The sumac was sold to sumac mills that ground it into powder and sold it to be used in tanning leather or dyeing fabric.

Sumac berries produce a nice red color when dyeing cotton and were used in combination with other dyestuffs to produce different colors.  “To dye Olive for wool.  For 5 pounds goods [wool yarn] take 2 pounds fustic and a little sumac; boil them ½ hour in water sufficient for the goods, then add this to 5 ounces logwood with 10 ounces alum and 4 ounces madder, and enter the goods and boil 1 hour.  Cool and darken with 5 ounces copperas.”

Sumac tea and “sumac-ade” are made by crushing the berries and soaking them in hot or cold water.  The flavor becomes strong when boiled due to the release of tannins.  It is advisable to strain a sumac beverage through cheesecloth to remove stray seeds and fuzz that comes off the drupes.

To make sumac spice, gather the red sumac berry clusters before rain washes the flavor out of the hair-like covering on the berries.   It may be a good idea to let them dry in a warm place overnight, especially if you plan to keep the sumac spice for some time.  Separate the berries from the stems.  Put the berries through a food processor until the red powder is separated from the seed.  Use a colander or strainer to separate the red powder from the seeds.  Discard the seeds.  A cup of berries will produce maybe 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons of sumac spice.  For a blend, add dried thyme, oregano, marjoram, lightly toasted sesame seed, and grind together.

Readers may wonder how sumac spice is used.  The sumac powder or the spice blend is rubbed onto meat prior to cooking or sprinkled on at table.  Various cultures put it on fish, kebabs, vegetables, flatbread, salads, etc.

Cut potatoes into large pieces, drizzle with olive oil, shake on salt, pepper, ground sumac berries, dried or fresh chopped thyme, and crushed garlic.  Toss and roast until tender and browned.  Other vegetables may be used in place of potatoes (zucchini, eggplant, etc).

[Rustic vegetarian quiche made with garden fresh squash and herbs, two cheeses, eggs, bechemel, and seasoned with sumac. Delicious!]

Make a salad of chopped cucumbers, parsley, onion or chopped scallions, sliced radishes, purslane leaves (if available), and tomatoes and dress with lemon juice and/or vinegar, salt, pepper, oil, and ground sumac.  It goes well in chickpea and black bean salad.

Rub your favorite cut of meat, chicken, or fish with oil, season with a dry rub made from ground sumac berries, salt, pepper, and dried thyme.  Chopped parsley and garlic are optional per taste.  Roast or grill until done.  Sprinkle it on seafood.

If you like the flavor, possibilities are almost endless in what you can do with sumac.  Mix the sumac spice blend with good olive oil and eat with pita or bread.  Mix the spice blend into hummus dip.  Add sumac to homemade pasta dough.  Make baked or grilled kafta (or meatballs) and season with the spice or blend.

Season lentil soup/stew; roasted chickpeas; dolmas (stuffed grape leaves); make sumac jelly as a substitute for cranberry sauce; combine sumac berries and water and place in the sunshine for an upgraded sun tea; combine mixed nuts, sumac spice, cumin, coriander, salt, pinch of pepper and chili powder with 2 tablespoons of oil or coconut oil and roast them; add it to rice, use it in marinades, or make a salad of quinoa and lentils and dress with oil, vinegar, and sumac spice or blend.

Last but not least, I can’t end this without the gardener in me mentioning how easy it is to grow sumac, almost too easy.  It spreads from suckers that grow around the bush and can quickly get out of hand if left unattended.  Sumac can be controlled by mowing it, digging, or pulling up the suckers but any gardener who seriously doesn’t want something that might be hard to control might consider planting it in a large pot or containing it by putting down a root barrier a foot or so deep around the area where it is planted.  If you don’t want to dig and transplant it from the wild it can be ordered online.

© Copyright 2017.  Please do not reprint or redistribute without the author’s permission. A lot of time and effort goes into my research.  Thank you.

Bib:

Yanovsky, Elias.  “Food Plants of the North American Indians”.  Dept. of Agriculture.  July 1936.

“Audubon”.  Vol. 22.  Jan.-Feb., 1920.

“Boys’ Life”.  May 1966.

“Harper’s Young People”.  1879/80.  Vol. 1.  Oct. 19, 1880.

“Vegetarian Times”.  Oct. 1981.

“Country Life”.  Vol. 35.  March 1919.

Dayton, William Adams.  “Important Western Browse Plants”.  Washington, D.C.  1931.

Saunders, Charles Francis.  “Useful Wild Plants in the United States and Canada”.  NY.  1920.

“Farmers’ Bulletin”.  Washington, D. C.  Feb. 1951.

Nabham, Gary Paul.  “Cumin, Camels, and Caravans:  A Spice Odyssey”.  2014.

Nordahl, Darrin.  “Eating Appalachia”.  2015.

Owens, Frances Emugene.  “Mrs. Owens’ New Cook Book and Household Manual”.   Chicago.  1899.

“The National Druggist”.  1919.

Chapple, Joe Mitchell.  “National Magazine”.  Vol. 21.  March 1905.

Hodge, Frederick Webb.  “Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico”.  1912. ©

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Thistle Salad Days©

The title of this post came from “Blackwood’s Magazine” Feb. 1895.  “…the French public was browsing the thistles of the Vicomte d’Arlincourt, or of ‘Lord R’Hoone’ (otherwise Honoré de Balzac himself in his thistle-salad days)…”.  Yes, gentle reader, salads are made from peeled thistle stalks and they can be cooked as well.

This caught my eye as I’ve been slowly compiling an encyclopedia of the history of salads (cooked, raw, and everything in between) over the past few years and because there are thistles growing in our field.  To eradicate them, or to eat them, that is the question.

One needn’t worry about identifying a species of thistle before consuming it as all are said to be edible.  Although it may be too hot for them to flourish, I’ve purchased seed to add cardoon to my perennial garden and cardoon is simply a cultivated thistle grown for its celery-like stems rather than its flower head.  The plant is usually covered with hay to render the stems white and tender, and they are eaten just as wild thistles are in the references below.  Depending on what is available, either will work in the same manner and cardoon can be found in cans or jars in specialty food stores for those who prefer to skip the thorns and go straight to the dining room.

Historians date the cultivation of cardoon to the days of Pliny and some think modern artichokes then evolved from cardoon about the 15^th century.

One might assume the eating of thistle stalks was learned from Native Americans, but given the accounts of them being eaten in England, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and other countries from at least the Middle Ages, proves the thistle is one of those basic resources that evolved simultaneously throughout much of the world.  “Nothing to eat, starving and weak; we followed the example of the squaw, in eating the inner portion of large thistle-stalks”.  – “Travels in the Far Northwest, 1839-1846”.

English cooks and 19^th century cookbook writers point out that applying fresh lemon juice to the peeled stalks will prevent them from turning dark.  Acidulated water, the term often used, is water with lemon juice into which the pieces can be placed for this purpose.

“Both the milk thistle and the blessed thistle were used by our ancestors, the former as a vegetable and the latter as a tonic, and Evelyn, in his ‘Acetaria’ [1699], says that to a salad of thistle leaves ‘the late Morocco Ambassador and his retinue were very partial.’  The leaves of the milk thistle shorn of their prickles were not only an ordinary ingredient in a salad, but they were also boiled’, and Tryon says of them, ‘they are very wholesome and exceed all other greens in taste’.  They were added to pottages, baked in pies, like artichoke bottoms, and fried.  Culpepper advises one to ‘cut off the prickles, unless you have a mind to choke yourself’, but in olden days both the scales and the roots were eaten.  The young stalks, peeled, were eaten both fresh and boiled.”  Rohde, Eleanor.  “A Garden of Herbs”.  1922.

In 1828, John Loudon included thistle-stalks in a list of culinary vegetables from the open garden.  Were these the common thistle, or were they the more refined garden cardoon?  “An Encyclopaedia of Gardening”.

John Young was definitely eating wild thistles when he wrote in his memoirs in 1847, “For several months we had no bread, Beef, milk, pig-weeds, segoes [sego lilies], and thistles formed our diet.  I was the herd boy, and while out watching the stock, I used to eat thistle stalks until my stomach would be as full as a cow’s”.  – Young, John R.  “Memoirs of John R. Young, Utah Pioneer”.  1847.

“Good Housekeeping”, Oct. 1891, contained an article called Cajun Housekeeping”, in which the author said, “Tender thistle stalks she cooks as one would asparagus, and they are just as good-then no adverse fate ever cuts short the thistle crop”.  I suppose if my asparagus bed fails to thrive, I may depend upon its wild substitute to supply us with this favorite.

MILK THISTLE STALKS.  The young stalks about May being peeled and soaked in water to extract the bitterness, boiled or raw are a very wholesome sallet eaten with oyl, salt and pepper.  Boil them in water with a little salt till they are very soft and so let them dry to drain.  They are eaten with fresh butter melted not too thin and this a delicate and wholesome dish.  Other stalks of the same kind may be so treated as the Bur being tender and disarmed of its prickles.  – Evelyn, John.  “Acetaria”.  1699.

CARDOON SALAD.  1885.  Jules Harder removed the leaves from the stalks, cooked them, and then peeled them.  “Then cut them in scallops an inch long and drain them on a napkin.  Put them in a salad bowl and season them with salt and pepper.  Then chop two cloves of garlic very fine and put them in a frying pan with a little sweet oil.  Fry them [garlic] lightly (not letting them get brown), and add immediately some bell peppers chopped fine, and some vinegar.  Then let them boil up for two minutes and pour the dressing over the Cardoons, mixing them well together, and then serve.”  – “The Physiology of Taste”.

CARDOON SALAD.  Jeanette Norton.  “Mrs. Norton’s Cookbook”.  1917.

The salad made of cardoons is rather unusual.  These French thistles should be drained from the can and allowed to marinate for half hour in French dressing to which a little onion juice has been added.  Drain, add good mayonnaise, and lay on white lettuce leaves garnished with the sweet pickled cucumber rings that come in bottles for the purpose.  Toasted whole wheat crackers with melted cheese on them go nicely with this salad.  This will serve four people.

Lord Bacon’s essay on plantations in the New World©

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colonies, Lord Bacon, plantations

The following is Lord Bacon’s essay on plantations. I found it to be remarkably insightful as to what was important for the earliest colonists when coming to America. One can tell from his comments that knowledge has been gained from prior failures at colonization and efforts were being made to avoid those mistakes again. Now, for your reading pleasure:

PLANTATIONS are amongst ancient, primitive, and heroical works. When the world was young it begat more children; but now it is old it begets fewer: for I may justly account new plantations to be the children of former kingdoms. I like a plantation in a pure soil; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to plant in others. For else it is rather an extirpation than a plantation. Planting of countries is like planting of woods; for you must make account to leese almost twenty years’ profit, and expect your recompense in the end. For the principal thing that hath been the destruction of most plantations, hath been the base and hasty drawing of profit in the first years. It is true, speedy profit is not to be neglected, as far as may stand with the good of the plantation, but no further. It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people, and wicked condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation; for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of the plantation. The people wherewith you plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, laborers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers. In a country of plantation, first look about what kind of victual the country yields of itself to hand; as chestnuts, walnuts, pineapples, olives, dates, plums, cherries, wild honey, and the like; and make use of them. Then consider what victual or esculent things there are, which grow speedily, and within the year; as parsnips, carrots, turnips, onions, radish, artichokes of Hierusalem, maize, and the like. For wheat, barley, and oats, they ask too much labor; but with pease and beans you may begin, both because they ask less labor, and because they serve for meat as well as for bread. And of rice likewise cometh a great increase, and it is a kind of meat. Above all, there ought to be brought store of biscuit, oat-meal, flour, meal, and the like, in the beginning, till bread may be had. For beasts, or birds, take chiefly such as are least subject to diseases, and multiply fastest; as swine, goats, cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, housedoves, and the like. The victual in plantations ought to be expended almost as in a besieged town; that is, with certain allowance. And let the main part of the ground employed to gardens or corn, be to a common stock; and to be laid in, and stored up, and then delivered out in proportion; besides some spots of ground that any particular person will manure for his own private. Consider likewise what commodities the soil where the plantation is doth naturally yield, that they may some way help to defray the charge of the plantation (so it be not, as was said, to the untimely prejudice of the main business), as it hath fared with tobacco in Virginia. Wood commonly aboundeth but too much; and therefore timber is fit to be one. If there be iron ore, and streams whereupon to set the mills, iron is a brave commodity where wood aboundeth. Making of bay-salt, if the climate be proper for it, would be put in experience. Growing silk likewise, if any be, is a likely commodity. Pitch and tar, where store of firs and pines are, will not fail. So drugs and sweet woods, where they are, cannot but yield great profit. Soap-ashes likewise, and other things that may be thought of. But moil not too much under ground; for the hope of mines is very uncertain, and useth to make the planters lazy in other things. For government, let it be in the hands of one, assisted with some counsel; and let them have commission to exercise martial laws, with some limitations. And above all, let men make that profit of being in the wilderness, as they have God always, and his service, before their eyes. Let not the government of the plantation depend upon too many counsellors and undertakers in the country that planteth, but upon a temperate number; and let those be rather noblemen and gentlemen, than merchants; for they look ever to the present gain. Let there be freedom from custom, till the plantation be of strength; and not only freedom from custom, but freedom to carry their commodities where they may make their best of them, except there be some special cause of caution. Cram not in people, by sending too fast company after company; but rather harken how they waste, and send supplies proportionably; but so as the number may live well in the plantation, and not by surcharge be in penury. It hath been a great endangering to the health of some plantations, that they have built along the sea and rivers, in marish and unwholesome grounds. Therefore, though you begin there, to avoid carriage and other like discommodities, yet built still rather upwards from the streams than along. It concerneth likewise the health of the plantation that they have good store of salt with them, that they may use it in their victuals, when it shall be necessary. If you plant where savages are, do not only entertain them with trifles and gingles, but use them justly and graciously, with sufficient guard nevertheless; and do not win their favor by helping them to invade their enemies, but for their defence it is not amiss; and send oft of them over to the country that plants, that they may see a better condition than their own, and commend it when they return. When the plantation grows to strength, then it is time to plant with women as well as with men; that the plantation may spread into generations, and not be ever pieced from without. It is the sinfullest thing in the world to forsake or destitute a plantation once in forwardness; for besides the dishonor, it is the guiltiness of blood of many commiserable persons.

The Historic Foodie is a copyrighted site.©

NATIVE AMERICAN WASTE OF THE BUFFALO &c. ©

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buffalo, decimation of buffalo

Photo: Two men shown with a mountain of buffalo skulls, public domain.

© We are conditioned to think of Native Americans as good stewards of Nature, taking only what was essential for their well-being, yet it is not hard to find first-hand accounts of buffalo hunting which paint a different picture. No one would argue the senseless slaughter and waste of these magnificent animals at the hands of the Europeans, however, the loss of the buffalo also rests on the shoulders of the Indian.

“If the chase has been a successful one, the remains of partially dressed buffalos are left; but if not, they [Indians] return, and the carcass is cleaned and meat taken to camp”.

While one might wonder at his qualifications to make such a statement, Thomas Thorpe wrote that, “No part of North America was originally unoccupied by the buffalo”, and took note of the commonality of the Indians wasting a degree of the meat after a hunt. “The Indian gluts himself with marrow and fatness…he spends days and nights in wasteful extravagance, trusting to the abundance of nature to take care of the future.”

“You may say to them that the Indians do not eat all the game they take,–that it is not supposed they eat more than four-fifths of the deer they kill. The skins are of great value to them, and having secured these, the bodies are left for the wolves to devour, and it is much the same with the buffalo; they are hunted for their tongues, and skins, of which they manufacture robes, and sell them to the fur traders. The tongues are esteemed a great luxury. If I should tell you how many thousands of these robes are made and sold in a year by the Osages, and other more distant tribes, you would be astonished that there were any buffaloes to be found within hundreds of miles. Some of their most skillful hunters will kill nearly a hundred deer in five or six weeks. If they do not become civilized before many years, the game will become so scarce that they must waste away in the wilderness, and perish from want”.

Adair stated in 1775, “The buffalo herds are now becoming scarce. The thoughtless and wasteful Indians used to kill great numbers of them, only for their tongue and marrow bones, leaving the rest of the carcases to the wild beasts”.

Josiah Greg noted in 1835 that travelers and hunters wreaked havoc on the buffalo but that the Indians often killed them merely for their skins and tongues. Romans had described the wanton destruction of the buffalo by those who took, “his tongue only” some 60 years prior [1776].

“Still, vast as these herds are, their numbers are much less than in earlier times, and they are diminishing with fearful rapidity…it would be well to attach the most stringent penalties against the barbarous practice of killing buffalo merely for the sport, or perhaps for the tongues alone. Thousands are killed every year in this way. After all, however, it is perhaps the Indian himself who commits the mischief most wantonly”.

Joel Allen studied the destruction of the buffalo with astonishing results, particularly regarding the Indians’ part in decimating the herds through the sale of buffalo robes. For the most part the hides were the only part of the animal that was harvested in those endeavors. His figures were taken from such notable sources as a partner in the American Fur Company and a railroad agent’s reports on the transportation of the robes and given the average waste of some three to five animals for every robe produced he arrived at the figure of 1,800,000 animals killed just by one group of Indians during a three or four month period annually. That does not include the robes kept for their own use.

For doubters of the figure, let us consider the number of such robes that were received at only a few posts on the Upper Missouri during a season. Ft. Benton – 36,000 robes; Ft. Union 30,000; Ft. Clark and Ft. Berthoud about 10,000 each; Ft. Pierre 19,000; bringing the total for the year to about 75,000, “which he informed me was about the annual average at that period”. The number of buffalo products he quoted that were enumerated by the auditors of the Kansas Pacific and other railways which hauled them was mindboggling for the same year, but it cannot be determined how much of them white hunters or Indians were responsible for. It might be noted that at the time this research was gathered and these killings took place [1871-2], herds had already dwindled to a mere fraction of what they’d been a century before and were completely nonexistent in some states.

Caitlin described in detail a one-day Sioux hunt in 1833 at the mouth of the Teton, when some 600 Sioux came into the settlement of the Fur Company at sunset with “fourteen hundred fresh buffalo tongues”, which they exchanged for a few gallons of whiskey. He said not one skin, nor one pound of flesh was saved from the slaughtered buffalo, everything save the tongues left to rot.

After describing the methods used by Native Americans to hunt deer and elk, John Hunter wrote, “The Indians seldom eat the flesh of either of these animals, while that of the buffalo can be obtained; it is, nevertheless, excellent in its season, particularly that of the deer”. He said further that while the Indian had once venerated the beaver, upon discovering the value the whites attached to the skins, they, “hunt it with an avidity and industry that threaten in the course of a few years to eradicate them from their hunting grounds”.

Alaska natives also hunted for the hides alone. Treasury agents noted in 1898 seeing bales of hides waiting to be shipped and upon inquiring what was done with the meat were told that the deer were shot only for the hides. “White men go out and kill the animals for fun…The natives kill them, because they can get a drink of whisky, valued at 25 cents, for every skin secured”.

There are accounts to the contrary, so perhaps the wastefulness varied between tribes, or, perhaps Ernest Seton was correct in saying, “Many of the Indians armed with rifles have learned to emulate the white man, and slaughter game for the love of slaughter, without reference to the future. Such waste was condemned by the old-time Indians, as an abuse of the gifts of God, and which would surely bring its punishment”.

SOURCES: Batty, Joseph H. “How to Hunt and Trap: Containing Full Instructions for Hunting the Buffalo, Elk, Moose, Deer, Antelope, Bear, Fox, Grouse, Quail, Geese, Ducks, Woodcock, Snipe, Etc., Etc.” 1878. NY.
U.S. Dept. of the Treasury. “Seal and Salmon Fisheries and General Resources of Alaska. 1898. Washington.
Thorpe, Thomas Bangs. “The Mysteries of the Backwoods, Or, Sketches of the Southwest”. 1846. Philadelphia.
Tuttle, Sarah. “Letters on the Chickasaw and Osage Missions”. 1833. Boston.
Greg, Josiah. “Commerce of the Prairies”. 1851. Philadelphia.
Romans. “Natural History of Florida”.
Baird, Professor. Pat. Office Rep., Agriculture, 1851-52, Part 2. P. 125.
Schoolcraft’s History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. Vol. IV, p. 94.
Allen, Joel Asaph. “History of the American Bison”. 1877. Washington.
“The Gentleman’s Magazine”. Aug. 1885.
Hunter, John Dunn. “Memoirs of a Captivity Among the Indians of North America, from Childhood to the Age of Nineteen.” 1823. London.

© All Rights Reserved

BUFFALO IN PRESENT DAY ALABAMA ©

Tags

bison, buffalo

The following brief summary documents the presence of buffalo in the Southeast, particularly in present day Alabama.

© “On the high plains of North America, the buffalo was the economic basis of Native American life well into the nineteenth century. When European-American settlement began to encroach on the area early in that century, an estimated 30 million buffalo lived in a large area from present-day Texas in the South to northern Alberta. East and west, buffalo ranged from present-day New York state to Alabama and Mississippi, to Idaho and eastern Oregon.” – Johansen, Bruce. “The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History”. 1999. Greenwood Press.

Southern states in which buffalo were documented include Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. One writer documented buffalo in Georgia to the middle of the state and in Mississippi to the coast, but stated he had found no primary source from the earliest settlement for buffalo in Alabama. He explained, however, that due to them being common in the neighboring states they were obviously present in Alabama but not documented by the early writers he had studied. Perhaps this was because in the mid-18th century Alabama was not yet a state and buffalo present in the area were lumped in with neighboring states or territories. [AL became a state in 1819, GA in 1788]. – “The Extermination of the American Bison”. 1889. U.S. Govt. Printing Office. Project Gutenberg.

Compare the first map below which dates from shortly after the French and Indian war (mid-18th century) with the second one from 1800 and note how the boundaries of Georgia have changed. In 1800, Georgia’s boundary has receded eastward and the area where Alabama will eventually be is labeled Mississippi Territory.

A little known account written in 1708 and published in 1988 documents buffalo in Alabama. The 18th century journal of Thomas Nairne was published by the University of Mississippi Press in 1988, and in it is found the following letter, penned by Nairne: “…the usuall divertion of the hunters was either to look for Bare [bear], fire a ring for Dear or go to the Clay pitts and shoot Buffaloes, for you must observe that in the spring and all sumer these cattle eat abundance of Clay. They find out such places as are saltish, which they like [lick] up in such quantities as if some hundreds of thousands of Bricks had been made out of them, and the paths leading to these holes are as many and well Trod, as those to the greatest Cowpens in Carolina…”.

The area Nairne was describing was on the Chattahoochee and crossing the Coosa, near present day Mongomery. – Nairne, Thomas, ed. By Alexander Moore. “Nairne’s Muskhogean Journals: The 1708 Expedition to the Mississippi River. U. of Miss. Press. 1988.

Thomas Foster says that buffalo were probably utilized by the Lower Creeks from the 1720’s or earlier. “In August 1739, at a Creek town on the Chattahoochee River (Russell County, Alabama), Oglethorpe’s men observed Creek men hunting turkeys, deer, geese, and buffalo. At another Creek town in Alabama, the white hunters observed that the Indians ‘spend much time in hunting deer, turkeys, and bison’.” He noted that by the 1770’s buffalo were probably becoming scarce in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. – “Archaeology of the Lower Muskogee Creek Indians 1715-1836”. 1970.

Sir Robert Montgomery described neighboring Georgia as the land between the Altamaha and the Savannah Rivers, “and abounding with large herds of deer, will buffalo’s, and most kinds of beasts, birds, …”. James Oglethorpe on his way to meet with the Creeks in Alabama encamped at Oconee River and the next day, “crossed the river and killed two buffaloes of which there are an abundance.”

Buffalo were prevalent in the area of Anniston, Alabama in the 1500’s according to author Ernest Callenbach who also noted the Army had a small herd of bison at the Depot there during present times. – “Bring Back the Buffalo!”. 1996.

An archaeological excavation at Moundville turned up bones which are thought to be bison. They weren’t positively identified as bison bones, but they did come from, “a very large mammal”, and there were distinct skinning marks on the bone further strengthening the belief that they were bison. – Knight, Vernon J. “Mound Excavations at Moundville”. 2010. Tuscaloosa.

“Before the days of white settlement in Alabama, herds of bison and elk grazed the prairies of the Black Belt and Wire-grass sections, and black bear and deer ranged the upland forests and river bottom canebrakes.” The author who penned those words went on to say that early explorers into Alabama found the Indians using hoes made from bison shoulder blades. – Writers Program (Ala.). “Alabama a Guide to the Deep South”. May 1941.

It is obviously safe to say that buffalo did once roam freely through Alabama, more’s the pity that “civilization” pushed them to the brink of extinction. Good day, – THF.© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

A Strange Dinner if Ever There Was One

Tags

edible snakes, fried rattlesnake

Peter Gruber was born in 1857 or ’58 in Oil City, PA and as a youngster learned about rattlesnakes from Native Americans who lived in the hills. As a young man he reluctantly entered the restaurant and saloon business with his father where he remained until Oil City was devastated by a flood and subsequent fire on June 5th. Peter removed himself and along with his reputation for housing poisonous snakes in 1893 went to Pittsburgh, but remained there only a short time when the city officials refused to grant him a business license to operate a saloon in which he kept snakes.

Apparently Rochester, NY wasn’t as particular about housing reptiles as Pete established himself there where he operated his business for some years with his serpent friends, despite being bitten by rattlesnakes 29 times and four times by copperheads. He operated the museum until 1931 and on Oct. 11, 1932 died at his home at the age of 75. He died not from snake bite as one might suspect, but from cardio-renal syndrome complicated by chronic nephritis, chronic endocarditis with lesions of the mitral and aortic valves, and arteriosclerosis. Following a burial mass at St. Mary’s Church he was buried in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery.

In 1901, Peter Gruber, known as Rattlesnake Pete, presided over a rather unique dinner given in honor of a fellow snake handler from Colorado who had previously hosted Pete in his home. The dinner took place in New York. “He first intended to pay a little compliment to his friend with a specially prepared dinner of rattlesnake, served in various toothsome ways, but becoming more and more enthusiastic over the idea, he enlarged the scope of the menu, adding watersnake stew, boiled python with egg sauce, and as the piéce de résistance served a large platter of roast boa-constrictor.”

Eighteen guests were present. The dinner was served in Pete’s den, “an odd little room off his place of business, for Pete, in the hours he can spare from playing with his pets, runs a saloon and restaurant, a quiet pleasant place. Only a favoured few are allowed to pass the door of the sanctum sanctorum where the snakes, sometimes more than a dozen, sometimes several score, live, watched over by their proud owner. The table decorations were striking and appropriate. A big rattler, caged in glass, served as a centerpiece, and stuffed reptiles in various attitudes took the place of the usual sprays of fern and smilax. The foot of the table was presided over by a huge cobra, stuffed of course, and around each plate were two or three diminutive black snakes, all alive. The walls of the room kept their everyday hangings of snake skins, rattlers’ rattles, canes made from wrigglers’ skins and many other curios.” Pete’s coat made entirely of rattlesnake skins was probably displayed there as well.

While your author would flatly refuse to eat dinner with a black snake crawling around the plate, apparently the eighteen guests enjoyed the food and the experience. “The ordinary guests proved rather nervous at first and made half-hearted motions with their spoons, but the two experts soon inspired them with more enthusiasm [to eat the watersnake stew].”

Some guests compared the stew to fish chowder, frogs’ legs, or eel, but when asked for the recipe the host refrained from offering it. The rattlesnake was thought similar to chicken or veal, but most guests claimed their hunger quite satiated before the python with egg sauce and roast boa constrictor were served.

The guest of honor took the caged rattler from its glass-walled den, wrapped it about himself quite playfully, and discussed the habits of the rattlesnake with his fellow guests who did not share his enthusiasm. When one of the attendees doubted the snake was capable of inflicting harm, the gentleman pried its jaws apart with a pen-knife whereupon drops of venom dripped from its fangs onto the knife blade.

In departing from the dinner, those present, “complimented its originator upon the success of his novel scheme”. They were far more polite than I in their appreciation of the strange goings-on much as were the many tourists who took a brief respite from the trains to rush to Pete’s establishment over the years. –

Source: The Strand Magazine. Nov. 1901. Various issues of the “Rochester Democrat and Chronicle”. Stilson, Charles B. “The Biography of Rattlesnake Pete”. 1923. Postcard images.

CHESTNUT FLOUR: It’s Many Uses

Tags

chestnut bread, chestnut cake, chestnut flour, chestnut pudding

I’m seeing a slow but growing interest in learning the foodways of the past, and I’m thankful for that because for years I’ve been disturbed by how many people have no concept of how food is prepared or preserved. Some day I’m going to do a post on just that, comments, as I’ve observed them, while doing cooking demos.

Today we’re going to take a brief look at a flour substitute that was once common, but which few have any knowledge of today. It can be used alone or combined with other types of flour and its claims to fame are that it is naturally slightly sweet, gluten-free, and has a low oil content.

Chestnuts were native to North America as well as Europe. I’ve seen numerous articles saying that Native Americans taught the Europeans to use chestnuts, however, I’m not buying the story. Chestnuts are one of those foods that seem to have evolved in various cultures simultaneously as people explored edible food sources around them.

Because there is no gluten, bread made entirely of chestnut flour does not rise like wheat flour and was referred to as “downbread” in earlier centuries. Thomas Harriot [1590] said of the Algonquians in North Carolina: “Chestnvts there are in diuers places great store: some they vse to eate rawe, some they stamp and boil to make spoonmeate, and with some being sodden they make such a manner of downbread as they vse their beanes.”

Among the early accounts of chestnuts and chestnut bread in America are De Vries’, “chestnuts, which they dry to eat”, [1600’s]; Rev. Johannes Megapolensis, Jr. [1664] who found, “an abundance of chestnuts, plums, hazelnuts, large walnuts”, etc.; and Kalm who saw meal made of chestnuts and walnuts [1740’s]. Gerarde [1633] noted, “Some affirme, that of raw chestnuts dried and afterwards turned into meale, there is made a kind of bread”. In later years, F. W. Waugh [1912-15] wrote of the Iroquois that they added crushed chestnuts to corn meal to make bread.

James Mooney documented Cherokee bean bread, chestnut bread, cornmeal dumplings, hominy, and corn gruel in a report published in 1891 and a Congressional report noted that chestnut bread was, “a great boon”, in supplementing rations on the Qualla boundary. “…the nuts being used very generally as food, both in the natural state and also in the prepared, “chestnut bread”, being a staple. This is nourishing and quite palatable, even to those not accustomed to its use. This, with corn prepared in various manners, with a little bacon and coffee, makes the ration of the ordinary Cherokee family”.

Chestnut bread remained a staple in Cherokee homes well into the 20th century. “…but in many homes food is always prepared in iron pots over a fireplace. Some delicacies, such as bean-bread, corn-bread, chestnut-bread, sweet hominy, or ‘cunahanna,’” were prepared. The latter was a dish made of whole corn, corn meal, beans, walnuts, hickory nuts, and wild honey. “This dish is very delicious, but three days are required to make it.”

A member of De Soto’s party wrote in his journal of the Indians in Florida using chestnuts and compared them to European chestnuts in 1539. He may have been the first European to pen a record of the use of chestnuts in North America. Other writers of consequence documented the Indians’ use of chestnuts including Capt. John Smith in 1612,“both broath and bread for their chiefe men or at least their greatest feasts”; and Romans in 1775 who spoke of the Creeks having, “dry peaches and persimmons… chestnuts…”.

In all of Europe, especially Italy, chestnuts were ground into flour for centuries and the demand often exceeded the supply. “The flour is made into a soup or a dough, which may be mixed with cacas, sugar, rice, or potato flour…It forms one of the principal articles of diet of the poor mountaineers”. – Forest Leaves. Vol. 10. Aug. 1906.

In later years, the Italians who could afford wheat flour made bread using one part chestnut flour to two parts wheat flour and the resulting product was said to be most excellent. Immigrants to North America may have done the same, or like Native Americans, they might well have combined it with cornmeal to make bread.

Immigrants familiar with them from their homeland knew the chestnut could be prepared as a vegetable or ground into flour and used to make bread and other products. They did so in early times, however, by 1905 one author said chestnuts were a luxury for Americans. While he felt it wasn’t used nearly as much as it should be in America, the writer did note that during October and November the flour could be purchased in the U.S.

Eighteenth and nineteenth century foods made from chestnut flour included polenta, breakfast porridge, puddings, cakes, pies, fritters, pancakes or griddle cakes, stuffing, and the water from boiled chestnuts was felt beneficial for chest complaints. Chestnut polenta was made of the flour with water and salt and it was eaten with cream, butter, ham, &c. The Italians made cakes out of chestnut flour and water which were baked over a fire between layers of chestnut leaves. Those cakes were usually eaten with buttermilk cheese, Bologna sausages, and meat.

The native chestnuts grew, “throughout the eastern United States, and is found from southern Maine through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and southward along the Alleghany Mountains to Alabama, and westward to Michigan and Indiana”. Their commonality tells us they were also known by Southeastern Indians and should be a part of Native American foodways presentations.

The chestnut tree blight eventually cast a dark shadow over the collection of native chestnuts, but the fate of the American chestnut is fodder for another post entirely.

The Native American chestnut tree attained immense proportions when growing in the open. A tree in Connecticut was documented about the turn of the 20th century at twenty-three feet circumference at a height of four feet above the ground, and eighty feet tall, and there were others even larger.

Early in the 20th century, John Parry complained that the U.S. used all it produced and each year turned to Southern Europe for a large quantity of nuts indicating they were once a presence larger than a few roasted nuts at Christmas time.

Shortages brought on by wars have necessitated substitutions for scarce ingredients throughout history, and chestnut flour was one of several the Europeans turned to during WWI. “The Italians are adding to scant war rations with chestnut bread. The chestnuts of Italy and Spain are much larger than those of America, and chestnut bread is a familiar article of diet in both lands.”

Meanwhile, in America, the Bureau of Chemistry was conducting experiments on various items which might be used here to replace or extend wheat flour including potato, rice, chestnut, dried banana, bran, soy beans, white beans, millet, Kafir, milo, dasheen, cottonseed flour, oatmeal, cassava, buckwheat, rye, corn gluten, Kaoliang, and peas. Any of these items might serve well today.

Anyone interested in replacing wheat flour, in whole or in part, might consider chestnut flour but if cost is a factor, making it at home might be preferable to purchasing it as it runs about $10. per pound. For many of us, the cost is increased due to having to add shipping charges. The following recipes use chestnuts in a variety of ways.

TO MAKE CHESTNUT FLOUR
Either cut a slit in the chestnuts or cut them in half. Place them on a pan and put into the oven to roast until the shells will peel away easily (about 40-45 minutes). Remove the shells and the papery covering (pellicle) and let them cool. Freeze the nuts for about 45 minutes. Grind the frozen chestnuts until you reach a meal-like consistency. Store the flour in an airtight container, preferably in the freezer. To make the flour in a historic setting, or in the absence of a power source, a mortar and pestle should work well.

CHESTNUT BREAD
Make a sponge as for white bread, using good white flour. When perfectly light, add a little salt and enough of chestnut flour to knead well. After kneading it thoroughly, form into loaves, put into well-oiled tins, and let it rise until twice its first size, and bake in a moderate oven for one hour.

CHESTNUT CAKE
Take 2 cups of chestnut flour, 5 eggs, 1 scant cup of sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls of water, and a pinch of salt. To make the chestnut flour, first dry the nuts before shelling, or toast them slightly with the shells on. By doing this the skins will be loosened and easily rubbed off without blanching; then grind them in a family grist-mill or a coffee-mill to a fine flour, or they may be ground through the nut-butter mill.
When all material and cake tin is ready and the oven hot, separate the eggs, and beat the yolks to a thick cream with the sugar. Then beat the whites until they are stiff and crumbly, adding the water and salt after it begins to get foamy but before it is stiff. Then pour in the yolk mixture, and fold it carefully in, and lastly fold in the 2 cups of chestnut flour. Bake like other cakes.

CHESTNUT SOUP
Shell and blanch a pint of Italian chestnuts…and cook in boiling milk until tender. Rub the nuts through a colander, add salt and sufficient milk and cream to make a soup of the proper consistency, reheat, and serve.

CHESTNUT MUFFINS
Beat three eggs, their whites and yolks separately, add three quarters of a pint of sweet milk and a tablespoon of melted butter, sift in one cup of chestnut flour with two teaspoons of baking powder. Beat the batter smooth, then add enough chestnut flour to bring the batter to a proper consistency, add also a pinch of salt and half fill warm buttered muffin pans. Bake about twenty minutes. (Note: These muffins aren’t going to rise as they would with wheat flour. Readers may want to use half chestnut and half wheat or other flour.)

The next two recipes are from “Mazdaznan Encyclopaedia of Dietetics and Home Cook Book: Cooked and Uncooked”. They are unusual by today’s standards but several scenarios come to mind in which the product might prove beneficial.

NUT BREAD
Grind coarse one-half cupful blanched almonds, one tablespoonful walnuts, two tablespoonfuls pine nuts. Add one half cupful flaked oats (or wheat, barley, rice, corn, peas, beans, or lentils). Mix it all thoroughly and moisten with milk, water or fruit juices. Spread in a thin layer. Sprinkle the top with St. John’s bread flour or chestnut flour and expose to the heat of the sunlight for at least one hour.

CHESTNUT BREAD
One pound finely-ground chestnuts, two tablespoonfuls ground peanuts, one pound flaked rice moistened with milk to make into loaves. Set out in the sun for an hour. Cut into slices and serve with fruit or vegetables.

CHESTNUT CAKE – Haskell (1861)
One pound and a half of boiled chestnuts mashed and sifted. One-fourth of a pound of loaf-sugar, the yolks of eight eggs beat light. Beat the ingredients well together, and spice to suit the taste. Line a shallow pudding-plate with puff paste; pour in the mixture. The Germans call this cake, but it is more like a pie or pudding.

STEAMED CHESTNUT PUDDING.
1 pound of chestnut pulp
½ pint of cream
¼ pound of fresh butter
¼ pound of sugar
8 yolks of eggs
6 whites of eggs
Pinch of salt
Vanilla or almond flavoring
Boil 1 ¼ pounds of chestnuts in water one hour. Peel them, scrape off the furry outside; mash the kernels through a sieve, moistening with hot cream. Mix all the other ingredients with puree except the whites of eggs; the yolks having been well beaten before stirring in.
Whip the whites firm, and lightly mix them in without beating. Steam in buttered moulds about one hour. Serve as soon as done, with diluted fruit jelly made hot for sauce…

CHESTNUT PUDDING [Note: This recipe was included in several 18th century cookbooks including Hannah Glasse, and Richard Briggs. Adjust the nutmeg to taste, and the pudding can probably be made just as successfully with half the number of large eggs].
Put a dozen and a half of chestnuts into a skillet or saucepan of water; boil them a quarter of an hour; then blanch and peel them and beat them in a marble mortar, with a little orange-flower or rose-water and white wine, till they are a fine thin paste; them beat up twelve eggs, with half the whites, and mix them well; grate half a nutmeg, and a little salt; mix them with three pints of cream and half a pound of melted butter; sweeten it to your palate, and mix altogether. Lay a puff paste all over the dish, and pour in the mixture and bake it. When cream cannot be got, take three pints of milk; beat up the yolks of four eggs, and stir into the milk; set it over the fire, stirring it all the time, till it be scalding hot; then mix it instead of the cream.

BOMB COQUELIN (Something Different in Chestnut Pudding) [Note: the chestnuts can be mashed or put through a ricer. Place the mixture in a loaf pan before freezing if desired.]
2 lbs. chestnuts, 4 squares chocolate, ½ lb. butter or margarine, ½ lb. castor sugar
Keep a little butter and sugar to mix with chocolate when the latter is being melted. Boil and skin chestnuts and pass carefully through a hair sieve. Cream butter and sugar, mix well with chestnut puree. Grease ice tray and put mixture in freezing for not more than 2 hours. Turn out on serving dish and pour over it the melted chocolate and serve. This can be cut in slices like a cake.

SOURCES FOR CHESTNUT FLOUR: Barry Farm, amazon.com,

Notes:
Bertini, Tullio Bruno. “Trapped in Tuscany and Liberated by the Buffalo Soldiers”. 1998. Boston.
“Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign Countries”. Govt. Printing Office, Washington. 1879.
Parry, John. “Nuts for Profit”. New Jersey. 1897.
Jaffa, Myer. “Nuts and their Uses as Food”. Farmers’ Bulletin 332. U.S. Dept. Agriculture. 1908.
Lambert, Almeda. “Guide for Nut Cookery”. 1899.
Kellogg, Ella Ervilla. “Science in the Kitchen”. 1892.
Norton, Jeanette. “Mrs. Norton’s Cook-book. 1917.
Jameson, John Franklin, ed. “Narratives of New Netherland 1609-1664”. 1909 edition.
Waugh, F. W. “Iroquois Foods and Food Preparation”.
“Illustrated World”. Vol. 30. Sept. 1918.
“National Baker”. Vol. 20. April 1915.
Hanish, O. Z., Dr. “Mazdaznan Encyclopaedia of Dietetics and Home Cook Book: Cooked and Uncooked. 1905. Chicago.
Mooney, James. “The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees”. Vol. 7. 1891. Washington. Government Printing Office.
“Congressional Serial Set”. Report Concerning Indians in North Carolina. Cherokee, N. C., September 6, 1902.
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman. “The Southern Workman”. Vol. 49. 1920.
Power, J. W. “Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 1900. Washington. Government Printing Office.
Haskell, E. F., Mrs. “The Housekeeper’s Encyclopedia of Useful Information for the Housekeeper. 1861. NY.
Whitehead, Jessup. “The American Pastry Cook”. 1894. Chicago
Huish, Robert. “The Female’s Friend”. 1837. London.
Young, Lady. “Lady Young’s Cookery Book”. 1900.

ACORN: The Other Flour©

Tags

acorn flour

It is common knowledge Indians ate acorns and were proficient at preparing them, however, how many of my readers know that as recently as 1917 they were being recommended as a source of food during WWI? There are some 50 species of oaks in the U.S. and around 30 of them are found in the Southeast.

A tribe in California stored dried acorns in baskets so air could circulate and prevent molding and used them to make mush and bread, while another also buried them in boggy areas near cold springs and allowed them to swell and grow soft. “They turned nearly black in color, but remained fresh for years”. They dug out a quantity and roasted them.

“When preserved dry in the usual way, the acorns are shucked as needed, and the dry meats, each splitting naturally in two parts, are pounded in stone mortars until reduced to a fine meal or flour. This at first is disagreeably bitter, but the bitter element is removed by leaching with warm water, which in seeping through acquires the color of coffee and the bitterness of quinine. The meal is then dried and stored to be used as required, for mush or bread.”

Eastern tribes preferred the sweeter varieties such as those from the white and chestnut oaks, but did eat any variety in times of scarcity. The Choctaw in Louisiana were noted to make flour from the acorns of the water oak by pounding it and letting water run through it in a basket to rid it of its bitter taste.

*White oaks have round lobed leaves, usually from 7 to 9 per leaf

Of the European countries known to consume acorns, England and France, “boiled acorns [which] were used as a substitute for bread”, and in fact, “acorns were eaten, at least in times of dearth till in the 8th century, when we find in the Regle of St. Chrodegand that by reason of an unfavourable year, the acorns and beech nuts failed.”

*Red oak leaves have pointed lobes, the leaf varies in shape, but always has points on the lobes.

During the war, an enterprising woman used acorn flour in bread baking and wrote that they were useful as a binder when used with corn meal or other coarsely ground gain used in making bread. She thought mush or bread made wholly of acorn flour less pleasing to her taste, but was altogether pleased with the result when combining one part acorn flour to four parts corn meal or white or whole wheat flour.

“The white oak family is the one to look for. This includes the eastern white oak, chestnut oak, and post oak. Their leaves have rounded or irregular lobes that lack any bristles at their ends. Acorns from the red-black oak group have a great deal of tannin. Their leaves have pointed lobes with bristles at the ends.”

The white oaks produce short stubby or round acorns while the red-black oaks produce acorns longer in shape than round. If the acorn’s cap is smooth and shiny, the acorn is from the white-oak family, if fuzzy in appearance, it is from the red-black oak.

In a non-historic setting, when your goal is simply to make flour, it is not necessary to grind the nuts using ancient techniques. Crack the nuts, using a nut-cracker can speed up the process, and cut the nuts into small pieces. Wrap the pieces in cheesecloth, and secure with string. Boil the nut meats in successive changes of water to remove the tannin. The tannin can also be removed by submerging the bundle in water and soaking them for several days, changing the water daily. With either method, they are ready to use when the water remains clear.

The acorn meat will have lost much in color and can be used at that point, or dried in the sun, a dehydrator, or low temp in your oven. When dry, the pieces can be put through a grinder, food mill, or run through a food processor or blender, or even put into a cloth bag and pounded to produce flour.

Method #2: Pound the acorns and remove the hulls. Put the fresh acorn meats in a blender with water and grind them to a pulp. Put the pulp in a towel-lined colander and run water through it or put it in a cloth and swish it in water to remove the tannin. Squeeze out all the excess water and either use the flour, dry it, or freeze it.

I have processed acorns for making ersatz coffee as was done in times of shortage in various cultures.

Sources: National Geographic. Vol. 34. Aug. 1918.
The Operative Miller. Jan. 1919.
Boys’ Life. Oct. 1983. Oct. 1977.
Bennet, Richard and Elton, John. The History of Corn Milling. Vol. I. 1898. London.

North Carolina Native Foods©

Tags

maize, Southeastern Indians, wild foods

This is part 3 of today’s post on Native foods and was penned in a description of the Indians of North Carolina. Perhaps the reader may wish to compare the subtle differences between the three areas (Maryland, Georgia and neighboring Alabama, and North Carolina). Spelling is unchanged from the original book.

I saw an episode of Preppers about an Apache man named Snake Blocker whose idea of surviving a catastrophe of epic proportions was to live off the land as his ancestors had. He has a better than average chance of doing so, however, his wife wanted no part of his foraged tidbits. I’ve thought about the program, and turned to original 18th century sources for a refresher on native self-reliance.

…Indian foods which are as follows. Venison, and fawns in the Bags, cut out of the doe’s belly; fish of all sorts, the lamprey-eel excepted, and the sturgeon our salt-water Indians will not touch; bear and bever; panther; pole-cat; wild-cat, possum; raccoon; hares, and squirrels, roasted with their Guts in; Snakes, all Indians will not eat them, though some do; All wild fruits that are palatable, some of which they dry and keep against winter, as all sort of fruits, and peaches, which they dry, and make Quiddonies, and Cakes, that are very pleasant, and a little tartish; young Wasps, when they are white in the combs, before they can fly, this is esteemed a Dainty; All sorts of Tortois, and terebins; shell-fish, and stingray, or Scate, dry’d; gourds; melons; cucumbers; squashes; pulses of all sorts; Rockahomine Meal, which is their Maiz, parch’d and pounded into powder; fowl of all sorts, that are eatable; ground-nuts, or wile potato’s; acorns and acorn oil; wild-bulls, beef, mutton, pork, &c. from the English; Indian Corn, or Maiz, made into several sorts of bread; ears of corn roasted in the summer, or preserv’d against winter.”

Source: A New Collection of Voyages and Travels. Ed. Stevens, Ed. 1711. London.

SOUTHERN INDIANS: Foods of The Creek Confederacy©

This is the second part of today’s post. The first dealt with Indians of Maryland, this one concerns the Southern Indians, especially the Creeks. Charles Colcock Jones began his discourse by saying there was a continual and friendly discourse between the families constituting the respective tribes. “Ever ready to assist each other, and entertaining an abiding friendship, the one for the other, the members of the various tribes seemed to Mr. Bartram to constitute one great family, holding all their possessions in common. Theft was almost unknown.”

Animal food of the Southern Indians included buffaloes, deer, bears, beavers, panthers, raccoons, opossums, wild-cats, rabbits, and squirrels, generally killed with bow and arrow. During certain seasons large quantities of meat were obtained, cured, and stored for future use. “All sorts of fishes, turtles, terrapins, oysters, clams, fresh-water mussels, conchs, alligators, and even some varieties of snakes, were eaten, and much time was consumed in the capture of the fishes by means of the bow and arrow, spears, nets, baskets, and wears.”

“Young wasps, white in the comb, were regarded as a dainty morsel. Wild-turkeys, water-fowl, and various birds were eagerly sought after and eaten. In a word, there was but little animal life in the forests or in the waters of the country which the Southern Indian excluded from his food list. Even upon dogs did they sometimes subsist…

Among the vegetables upon which these primitive peoples chiefly relied for sustenance, may be mentioned Indian corn (maize or zea), wild-potatoes, ground-nuts, acorns, walnuts, hickory-nuts, chestnuts, pumpkins, melons, gourds, beans, pulse of various sorts, persimmons, peaches, plums, grapes, and mulberries. The tuberous roots of the smilax were dug up, and while still fresh and full of juice, were chopped up and macerated well in wooden mortars. When thoroughly beaten, this pulpy mass was put in earthen vessels containing clean water. Here it was stirred with wooden paddles or with the hands. The lighter particles, floating upon the top, were poured off. A farinaceous matter was left at the bottom of the vessel; which, when taken out and dried, remained an impalpable powder or farina of a reddish color. Boiled in water, this powder formed a beautiful jelly, which, when sweetened, was both agreeable and nourishing. In combination with corn-flour and when fried in fresh bear’s-grease, it made excellent fritters.”

The dried corn was beaten in a mortar, boiled for hominy, or missed with hickory-nut-milk, walnut-oil, or fresh bear’s-fat, was baked into bread or fried as cakes. Oil was skimmed off the top of water in which walnuts or hickory nuts had been boiled, and stored in covered earthen jars to be used on corn-cakes. Bread was also made from pounded sunflower seeds. Persimmons and grapes were dried and stored for winter. Jones enumerated several ways they obtained salt which he says they had in abundance.

Soruce: Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes. 1873. NY.