Welcome back to our weekly Historical Tidbit Blog Column!
Reginald and Gladys Laubin's book is a wealth of information as they actually lived in the tipis they built and recreated the lifestyle including following the cooking methods and recipes used traditionally by nomadic Native Americans. Not all Indian tribes ate the same foods depending on where they lived, the tools they had available, etc. Once they moved onto reservations, some adopted a farming way of life while others were provided government rations, thereby changing a lot of the foods and meals with which they were familiar.
Here are some of the more common foods/meals:
Ash Cake - corn meal cake and dried berries wrapped in sweet leaves and baked in hot ashes
Bean Bread - (Cherokees/Eastern Indians) corn meal and beans wrapped in a large grape leaf then boiled
Camas - the bulbs could be eaten raw or were roasted in a pit oven, dried, and mashed into dough. The roots were edible (the ones with blue flowers only). The camas with yellow or cream-colored flowers were poisonous.
Corn Dodgers - dough rolled into cylinders and deep fried in fat
Fry Bread - plain flour dough fried to a golden color
Journey Cake - commonly mistaken for "Johnny Cake"; a corn meal cake
Marrow Guts - intestines heavily coated with fat and broiled over coals
Pumpkins
Roasting Ears - ears of corn (green) left in husks and roasted across hot coals
Scipio beans - pinkish beans; cooked
Squash - several varieties including Acorn Squash
Source:
"The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction, and Use" by Reginald and Gladys Laubin
ISBN#0-8061-2236-6
No comments:
Post a Comment