Post by blackcrowheart on Oct 8, 2006 14:43:00 GMT -5
INDIAN FOOD AND COOKING IN EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA
On their third day in the New World, sometime in July 1584, Sir Walter
Ralegh's reconnaissance party under Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe met
three natives. Having no language in common, the two groups quickly resorted
to the universal media of polite discourse: food and drink. The explorers
took an Indian aboard one of their ships and persuaded him to sample their
meat and wine, which Barlowe said, "he liked very well." In return, the
Indian caught them as many fish as his canoe could hold.
Over the next few days the Englishmen entertained Granganimeo, an Indian
nobleman, and some of his retinue. He reciprocated by sending "euery daye a
brase or two of fatte Buckes, Conies [common cottontail rabbits], Hares
[marsh rabbits], Fishe....fruites, Melon [pumpkins], Walnuts, Cucumbers
[probably squash], Gourdes, Pease, and diuers rootes." Barlowe made special
note of the Indians' corn, which he found "very white, faire, and well
tasted."
At length Barlowe and seven other Englishmen visited the palisaded village
on the north end of Roanoke Island. Although they seem to have arrived
unexpectedly while Granganimeo was elsewhere, they got a taste of local
hospitality. After washing the visitors and their clothes, Granganimeo's
wife and retainers served the Englishmen a feast in his five-room house. It
included roasted and stewed venison and fish, boiled corn or hominy, raw and
cooked pumpkins and squash, and various fruits.
Barlowe did not record what beverages the Indians served him and his
companions, but he did say that the Indians customarily drank wine "while
the grape lasteth" and water "sodden with Ginger [sic] in it, and blacke
Sinamone [perhaps dogwood or magnolia bark], and sometimes Sassafras, and
diuers other wholesome, and medicinable hearbes." (Black drink, made mostly
or exclusively of scorched yaupon leaves, was common throughout the region,
but the spiced beverages Barlowe describes were not, and wine, if he was not
mistaken, was probably unique in the Western Hemisphere.)
For safety Barlowe and company declined to sleep in the village and spent a
rainy night in open boats in the sound. Their hosts evidently took no
offense, for they sent along the leftovers, pots and all, and kept watch on
shore.
Not until Ralph Lane and his colonists spent eleven months in North Carolina
(1585-1586) did Englishmen begin fully to appreciate the bounty of the
region and the diversity of Indian cuisine. John White, who may not have
stayed in the New World the whole time, made several revealing drawings of
Indians cooking and eating. Thomas Harriot, a colonist with an analytical
mind and a discriminating palate, devoted much of his "Briefe and True
Report of the New Found Land of Virginia" to a catalog of native foodstuffs.
The waters of the region yielded tremendous quantities of fish-sturgeon,
herring, mullet, and other species-upon which the Indians depended for much
of their protein. Crabs, oysters, clams, scallops, and mussels were another
major part of their diet. In spring, when stores laid in the previous fall
were depleted and crops were not yet ripe, tribes living on the outer
coastal plain often sent members who could be spared to nearby estuaries to
subsist on shellfish. (In the spring of 1586, worsening relations with the
Indians upon whom the colonists depended for food forced Ralph Lane to adopt
this practice and disperse his band to various locations where fish and
shellfish could be obtained easily.) Over generations, huge mounds of shells
accumulated at favored spots. One of these, the present Tillett site on the
south end of Roanoke Island, shows evidence of use from around the time of
Christ to the disappearance of the coastal tribes in the seventeenth century
Harriot mentioned turtles and terrapins (both "very good meate, as also
their egges" ), porpoises, and "Creuises" (crayfish or lobsters or both),
but did not say whether Indians ate them.
The Indians of eastern North Carolina probably had no domestic animal except
the dog, but the vast forests, marshes, and swamps abounded in bears, deer,
rabbits, squirrels, turkeys, doves, partridges, and water birds. Several of
the nominally edible mammals were entirely new to the Englishmen, and
Harriot did a poor job of describing them. Saquenuckot, for example, could
have been a muskrat, opossum, mink, or raccoon; so could Maquowoc.
Harriot listed six wild root vegetables eaten by the Indians. Openauk may
have been the ground nut or the Indian or marsh potato-not the Irish potato.
(Sir Walter Ralegh has long received undeserved credit for bringing the
Irish potato to Europe. It is native to South America, and the Spanish
probably introduced it before he was born.) Okeepenauk, "of the bignes of a
mans head," may have been the wild potato, a relative of the sweet potato.
The English identified coscushaw as casasava. If it belonged to the arum
family, it was not poisonous like raw cassava; but the Indians' elaborate
preparation probably made a considerable improvement in its taste. Harriot
thought that tsinaw (probably some kind of smilax) was similar to the "China
root" imported to England from the East Indies. Its name may be nothing more
than a native's attempted pronunciation of China. Harriot had such a low
opinion of kaishucpenauk (duck potatoes?) that he pointedly omitted "their
place and manner of growing." He said little more about the hot-tasting
habascon, perhaps the cow parsnip, except that the Indians added it to their
stewpots for flavoring and never ate it alone.
Wild fruits added further zest and balance to the Indians' varied diet.
Strawberries were available for the taking, as were crab apples, mulberries,
persimmons, prickly pears, "Hurtleberies" (huckleberries, blueberries, or
even cranberries), and many species that Harriot did not list. The Indians
undoubtedly ate all four native varieties of grape (Harriot mentioned two)
out of hand even if they did not make wine. In addition, the Indians
collected many nuts and seeds, including chinquapins, two kinds of "walnuts"
(probably the black walnut and one or more sorts of hickory nut), the five
kinds of acorn that Harriot could distinguish (and perhaps others), and a
grain that sounds like wild rice but probably came from an unrelated marsh
grass.
The Indians were not only hunters and gatherers, but also farmers. Maize
(corn) was their chief crop, for it grew well in the acidic soils of the
coastal plain. But they also raised sunflowers, pulses (Harriot
distinguished beans, perhaps kidney beans, from peas, but described neither
thoroughly), and several kinds of pumpkin, squash, and gourd.
Having no ovens, the Indians did little baking, except perhaps in shallow
pots or directly in hot coals. Although they extracted oil from acorns, nuts
and sunflower seeds and had animal fat in abundance, they seem to have done
little or no frying. Well-known Indian staples from other regions, such as
jerky and pemmican, seem to have been missing. The Indians of eastern North
Carolina ate their great variety of foods in only four basic states-raw,
broiled, stewed, and dried, with or without the aid of fire, then
reconstituted with water. Harriot distinguished boiled foods from those
seethed" and "sodden" ; it is not always easy to tell what he meant by the
latter two terms, but both involved cooking in water.
The Indians ate much of their fruit and many nuts uncooked. They also ate
raw pumpkins and squash, which Englishmen probably found hard to take, and
at least one root, the uncooperative okeepenauk, which would "neither roste
nor seeth."
The Indians with whom Harriot was most familiar preserved acorns by drying
them "vpon hurdles made of reeds with fire vnderneath." They probably
parched corn in like manner. John Lawson, who explored the Carolinas in the
early eighteenth century, said that Indians living to the west and south
treated some fruits similarly.
One of White's drawings shows how the local Indians broiled fish on wooden
grills, which may have been used as well for meat. But according to Harriot,
they did not smoke fish or meat for long-term storage, as the Indians of
Florida did.
The Indians of eastern North Carolina made many sizes and kinds of clay pot.
Most had pointed bottoms, which had to be supported with earth. These pots,
though seemingly awkward, were as functional after their fashion as the
round-bottomed Chinese wok, and the Indians did much of their cooking in
them. They made many kinds of bread, mush, spoonbread, and dumpling from
fresh or dried corn, pulses, acorns, and nuts. Corn and beans went into a
dish like succotash. Cornmeal mush or broiled fresh or dried corn evidently
served as the base of countless vegetable, meat, and fish stews. Harriot
reported that the Indians customarily filled a pot with "fruite, flesh, and
fish, and lett all boyle together like a galliemaufrye, which the Spaniarde
call, olla podrida." But they may have cooked such a dish only on festive
occasions or when esteemed visitors like Harriot were present. Barlowe's
report implies that the Indians of the region also boiled meat, fish, pulses
pumpkins, and squash separately.
Although they lacked salt, the Indians of eastern North Carolina had a
variety of seasonings. Among them were bay leaves, sassafras leaves (still
used to flavor and thicken file gumbo), sassafras roots, and the ashes of a
plant that Harriot thought related to spinach. According to Harriot and
Lawson, nuts pounded with or without water were a common additive to stews,
soups and spoonbread. Oddly, the eastern Indians seem to have ignored the
wild relatives of the onion growing profusely in the region.
As in other cultures, a meal could mark an occasion of great joy, sadness,
or civic or religious significance. But Indian meals were generally
unceremonious by European standards. Serving-women simply placed stitched or
woven mats of reeds or other material on the ground, indoors or out, and
presented the food on "platters of sweete timber." (In noblemen's households
servants or slaves probably distributed the food; in commoners' households,
that duty fell to family members.) Everyone then sat "Rownde, the men vppon
one side, and the woemen on the other," eating whatever lay before them in
any order they pleased without utensils or, it seems, excessive formality.
The Indians spent much time outdoors and necessarily led very active lives.
Their caloric intake was sometimes great, but so was their caloric demand.
The uncertainties of hunting, gathering, and even farming sometimes led them
to gorge during periods of plenty, and European settlers in Virginia in the
seventeenth century commented on these occasional excesses, which may have
had some kind of religious or customary significance, in vivid detail. Such
reports notwithstanding, the Indians of the region can hardly be considered
chronically gluttonous as a class. Indeed, their moderation impressed many
early observers, Harriot chief among them. "They are verye sober in their
eatinge, and drinkinge, and consequentlye verye longe liued because they doe
not oppress nature," he wrote. "I would to god wee would followe their
exemple."
Credits:
Text based on "Indian Food and Cooking in Coastal North Carolina 400 Years
Ago," by David Stick;
edited and expanded by lebame houston and Wynne Dough.
return to: Roanoke Revisited
Main Page
Contact Information:
www.nps.gov/fora/test/indcooking.htm
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
National Park Service
Rt. 1, Box 675
Manteo, NC 27954
Call (252) 473-5772
On their third day in the New World, sometime in July 1584, Sir Walter
Ralegh's reconnaissance party under Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe met
three natives. Having no language in common, the two groups quickly resorted
to the universal media of polite discourse: food and drink. The explorers
took an Indian aboard one of their ships and persuaded him to sample their
meat and wine, which Barlowe said, "he liked very well." In return, the
Indian caught them as many fish as his canoe could hold.
Over the next few days the Englishmen entertained Granganimeo, an Indian
nobleman, and some of his retinue. He reciprocated by sending "euery daye a
brase or two of fatte Buckes, Conies [common cottontail rabbits], Hares
[marsh rabbits], Fishe....fruites, Melon [pumpkins], Walnuts, Cucumbers
[probably squash], Gourdes, Pease, and diuers rootes." Barlowe made special
note of the Indians' corn, which he found "very white, faire, and well
tasted."
At length Barlowe and seven other Englishmen visited the palisaded village
on the north end of Roanoke Island. Although they seem to have arrived
unexpectedly while Granganimeo was elsewhere, they got a taste of local
hospitality. After washing the visitors and their clothes, Granganimeo's
wife and retainers served the Englishmen a feast in his five-room house. It
included roasted and stewed venison and fish, boiled corn or hominy, raw and
cooked pumpkins and squash, and various fruits.
Barlowe did not record what beverages the Indians served him and his
companions, but he did say that the Indians customarily drank wine "while
the grape lasteth" and water "sodden with Ginger [sic] in it, and blacke
Sinamone [perhaps dogwood or magnolia bark], and sometimes Sassafras, and
diuers other wholesome, and medicinable hearbes." (Black drink, made mostly
or exclusively of scorched yaupon leaves, was common throughout the region,
but the spiced beverages Barlowe describes were not, and wine, if he was not
mistaken, was probably unique in the Western Hemisphere.)
For safety Barlowe and company declined to sleep in the village and spent a
rainy night in open boats in the sound. Their hosts evidently took no
offense, for they sent along the leftovers, pots and all, and kept watch on
shore.
Not until Ralph Lane and his colonists spent eleven months in North Carolina
(1585-1586) did Englishmen begin fully to appreciate the bounty of the
region and the diversity of Indian cuisine. John White, who may not have
stayed in the New World the whole time, made several revealing drawings of
Indians cooking and eating. Thomas Harriot, a colonist with an analytical
mind and a discriminating palate, devoted much of his "Briefe and True
Report of the New Found Land of Virginia" to a catalog of native foodstuffs.
The waters of the region yielded tremendous quantities of fish-sturgeon,
herring, mullet, and other species-upon which the Indians depended for much
of their protein. Crabs, oysters, clams, scallops, and mussels were another
major part of their diet. In spring, when stores laid in the previous fall
were depleted and crops were not yet ripe, tribes living on the outer
coastal plain often sent members who could be spared to nearby estuaries to
subsist on shellfish. (In the spring of 1586, worsening relations with the
Indians upon whom the colonists depended for food forced Ralph Lane to adopt
this practice and disperse his band to various locations where fish and
shellfish could be obtained easily.) Over generations, huge mounds of shells
accumulated at favored spots. One of these, the present Tillett site on the
south end of Roanoke Island, shows evidence of use from around the time of
Christ to the disappearance of the coastal tribes in the seventeenth century
Harriot mentioned turtles and terrapins (both "very good meate, as also
their egges" ), porpoises, and "Creuises" (crayfish or lobsters or both),
but did not say whether Indians ate them.
The Indians of eastern North Carolina probably had no domestic animal except
the dog, but the vast forests, marshes, and swamps abounded in bears, deer,
rabbits, squirrels, turkeys, doves, partridges, and water birds. Several of
the nominally edible mammals were entirely new to the Englishmen, and
Harriot did a poor job of describing them. Saquenuckot, for example, could
have been a muskrat, opossum, mink, or raccoon; so could Maquowoc.
Harriot listed six wild root vegetables eaten by the Indians. Openauk may
have been the ground nut or the Indian or marsh potato-not the Irish potato.
(Sir Walter Ralegh has long received undeserved credit for bringing the
Irish potato to Europe. It is native to South America, and the Spanish
probably introduced it before he was born.) Okeepenauk, "of the bignes of a
mans head," may have been the wild potato, a relative of the sweet potato.
The English identified coscushaw as casasava. If it belonged to the arum
family, it was not poisonous like raw cassava; but the Indians' elaborate
preparation probably made a considerable improvement in its taste. Harriot
thought that tsinaw (probably some kind of smilax) was similar to the "China
root" imported to England from the East Indies. Its name may be nothing more
than a native's attempted pronunciation of China. Harriot had such a low
opinion of kaishucpenauk (duck potatoes?) that he pointedly omitted "their
place and manner of growing." He said little more about the hot-tasting
habascon, perhaps the cow parsnip, except that the Indians added it to their
stewpots for flavoring and never ate it alone.
Wild fruits added further zest and balance to the Indians' varied diet.
Strawberries were available for the taking, as were crab apples, mulberries,
persimmons, prickly pears, "Hurtleberies" (huckleberries, blueberries, or
even cranberries), and many species that Harriot did not list. The Indians
undoubtedly ate all four native varieties of grape (Harriot mentioned two)
out of hand even if they did not make wine. In addition, the Indians
collected many nuts and seeds, including chinquapins, two kinds of "walnuts"
(probably the black walnut and one or more sorts of hickory nut), the five
kinds of acorn that Harriot could distinguish (and perhaps others), and a
grain that sounds like wild rice but probably came from an unrelated marsh
grass.
The Indians were not only hunters and gatherers, but also farmers. Maize
(corn) was their chief crop, for it grew well in the acidic soils of the
coastal plain. But they also raised sunflowers, pulses (Harriot
distinguished beans, perhaps kidney beans, from peas, but described neither
thoroughly), and several kinds of pumpkin, squash, and gourd.
Having no ovens, the Indians did little baking, except perhaps in shallow
pots or directly in hot coals. Although they extracted oil from acorns, nuts
and sunflower seeds and had animal fat in abundance, they seem to have done
little or no frying. Well-known Indian staples from other regions, such as
jerky and pemmican, seem to have been missing. The Indians of eastern North
Carolina ate their great variety of foods in only four basic states-raw,
broiled, stewed, and dried, with or without the aid of fire, then
reconstituted with water. Harriot distinguished boiled foods from those
seethed" and "sodden" ; it is not always easy to tell what he meant by the
latter two terms, but both involved cooking in water.
The Indians ate much of their fruit and many nuts uncooked. They also ate
raw pumpkins and squash, which Englishmen probably found hard to take, and
at least one root, the uncooperative okeepenauk, which would "neither roste
nor seeth."
The Indians with whom Harriot was most familiar preserved acorns by drying
them "vpon hurdles made of reeds with fire vnderneath." They probably
parched corn in like manner. John Lawson, who explored the Carolinas in the
early eighteenth century, said that Indians living to the west and south
treated some fruits similarly.
One of White's drawings shows how the local Indians broiled fish on wooden
grills, which may have been used as well for meat. But according to Harriot,
they did not smoke fish or meat for long-term storage, as the Indians of
Florida did.
The Indians of eastern North Carolina made many sizes and kinds of clay pot.
Most had pointed bottoms, which had to be supported with earth. These pots,
though seemingly awkward, were as functional after their fashion as the
round-bottomed Chinese wok, and the Indians did much of their cooking in
them. They made many kinds of bread, mush, spoonbread, and dumpling from
fresh or dried corn, pulses, acorns, and nuts. Corn and beans went into a
dish like succotash. Cornmeal mush or broiled fresh or dried corn evidently
served as the base of countless vegetable, meat, and fish stews. Harriot
reported that the Indians customarily filled a pot with "fruite, flesh, and
fish, and lett all boyle together like a galliemaufrye, which the Spaniarde
call, olla podrida." But they may have cooked such a dish only on festive
occasions or when esteemed visitors like Harriot were present. Barlowe's
report implies that the Indians of the region also boiled meat, fish, pulses
pumpkins, and squash separately.
Although they lacked salt, the Indians of eastern North Carolina had a
variety of seasonings. Among them were bay leaves, sassafras leaves (still
used to flavor and thicken file gumbo), sassafras roots, and the ashes of a
plant that Harriot thought related to spinach. According to Harriot and
Lawson, nuts pounded with or without water were a common additive to stews,
soups and spoonbread. Oddly, the eastern Indians seem to have ignored the
wild relatives of the onion growing profusely in the region.
As in other cultures, a meal could mark an occasion of great joy, sadness,
or civic or religious significance. But Indian meals were generally
unceremonious by European standards. Serving-women simply placed stitched or
woven mats of reeds or other material on the ground, indoors or out, and
presented the food on "platters of sweete timber." (In noblemen's households
servants or slaves probably distributed the food; in commoners' households,
that duty fell to family members.) Everyone then sat "Rownde, the men vppon
one side, and the woemen on the other," eating whatever lay before them in
any order they pleased without utensils or, it seems, excessive formality.
The Indians spent much time outdoors and necessarily led very active lives.
Their caloric intake was sometimes great, but so was their caloric demand.
The uncertainties of hunting, gathering, and even farming sometimes led them
to gorge during periods of plenty, and European settlers in Virginia in the
seventeenth century commented on these occasional excesses, which may have
had some kind of religious or customary significance, in vivid detail. Such
reports notwithstanding, the Indians of the region can hardly be considered
chronically gluttonous as a class. Indeed, their moderation impressed many
early observers, Harriot chief among them. "They are verye sober in their
eatinge, and drinkinge, and consequentlye verye longe liued because they doe
not oppress nature," he wrote. "I would to god wee would followe their
exemple."
Credits:
Text based on "Indian Food and Cooking in Coastal North Carolina 400 Years
Ago," by David Stick;
edited and expanded by lebame houston and Wynne Dough.
return to: Roanoke Revisited
Main Page
Contact Information:
www.nps.gov/fora/test/indcooking.htm
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
National Park Service
Rt. 1, Box 675
Manteo, NC 27954
Call (252) 473-5772