Post by blackcrowheart on Apr 2, 2008 11:19:46 GMT -5
How Salt Was Made
How The Cherokees Made Salt
(The Indian Pioneer Papers are the product of a project developed in 1936.
The Oklahoma Historical Society teamed with the history department at the
University of Oklahoma to get a Works Progress Administration (WPA) writers'
project grant for an interview program. The program was headquartered in
Muskogee and was led by Grant Foreman. The writers conducted more than
11,000 interviews and after editing and typing the work, the results were
over 45,000 pages long. The following excerpt is from the interview of Henry
Downing of Nowata.)
There is a place near Salina that has salt springs, I well remember when I
was a small boy, my parents and some of the neighbors would go there every
year to make salt for their year's supply. They had three large kettles,
four feet across the top and about three feet deep. They would build up a
large fire under each of these kettles and fill them up with this salt water
and boil it until the water was all boiled away. Then they would take out
the salt that was left in the kettles. As near as I can remember we got
about three or four gallons at a salt cooking, and the part I played in
making this salt was to keep the fires burning for there had to be just so
much fire burning all the time under each kettle and it was up to us boys to
keep that fire just so.
After the old people would get the kettles all filled with water they would
all gather around and smoke their pipes until the water was all boiled away
and the salt ready to take out. We would get about five cooking off in a
day's work. There would be as many as twenty-five families at a time gather
to make their year's supply of salt.
I remember there were three springs very close together. Two of the springs
had water that was clear, cool and good to drink. The other spring was where
we got our water for the salt.
Info provided by the Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center
How The Cherokees Made Salt
(The Indian Pioneer Papers are the product of a project developed in 1936.
The Oklahoma Historical Society teamed with the history department at the
University of Oklahoma to get a Works Progress Administration (WPA) writers'
project grant for an interview program. The program was headquartered in
Muskogee and was led by Grant Foreman. The writers conducted more than
11,000 interviews and after editing and typing the work, the results were
over 45,000 pages long. The following excerpt is from the interview of Henry
Downing of Nowata.)
There is a place near Salina that has salt springs, I well remember when I
was a small boy, my parents and some of the neighbors would go there every
year to make salt for their year's supply. They had three large kettles,
four feet across the top and about three feet deep. They would build up a
large fire under each of these kettles and fill them up with this salt water
and boil it until the water was all boiled away. Then they would take out
the salt that was left in the kettles. As near as I can remember we got
about three or four gallons at a salt cooking, and the part I played in
making this salt was to keep the fires burning for there had to be just so
much fire burning all the time under each kettle and it was up to us boys to
keep that fire just so.
After the old people would get the kettles all filled with water they would
all gather around and smoke their pipes until the water was all boiled away
and the salt ready to take out. We would get about five cooking off in a
day's work. There would be as many as twenty-five families at a time gather
to make their year's supply of salt.
I remember there were three springs very close together. Two of the springs
had water that was clear, cool and good to drink. The other spring was where
we got our water for the salt.
Info provided by the Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center