Shawnee Indian Food And Cooking Techniques
Pan-Handle of West Virginia
NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN FOOD AND COOKER
1762. Heckwelder says at that time their principal food consisted of game, fish, corn, potatoes, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, squashes, melons, cabbages, and turnips, roots of plants, fruits, nuts, and berries. "They take but two meals a day. The hunters or fishermen never go out in the middle of the day, except it be cloudy. Their custom is to go out on an empty stomach as a stimulant to exertion in shooting game or catching fish. "They make a pottage of corn, dry pumpkins, beans and chestnuts, and fresh or dried meats, pounded, all sweetened with maple sugar or molasses, and well boiled. They also make a good dish of pounded corn and chestnuts, shellbarks and hickory nut kernels, boiled, covering the pots with large pumpkin, cabbage, or other leaves. "They make excellent preserves from cranberries and crab apples, with maple sugar. "Their bread is of two kinds; one mode of green, and the other of dry corn. If dry, it is sifted after pounding, kneaded, shaped into cakes six inches in diameter, one inch thick, and baked on clean dry ashes, of dry oak barks. If green, it is mashed, put on broad green corn blades, filled in with a ladle, well wrapped up and baked in ashes. "They make warrior's bread by parching corn, sifting it, pounding into flour, and mixing sugar. A table-spoonful with cold or boiling water is a meal, as it swells in the stomach, and if more than two spoonsful is taken, it is dangerous. Its lightness enables the warrior to go on long journeys and carry his bread with him. Their meat is boiled in pots, or roasted on wooden spits or coals." The original Indian method of making sugaV is said to have been in this manner: The sap from the maple trees was gathered and placed in large wooden troughs which they haggled out with their tomahawks. Hot stones were then thrown into the sap which was made to boil in this way, and the process continued until it was reduced to the required consistency.
Pan-Handle of West Virginia
NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN FOOD AND COOKER
1762. Heckwelder says at that time their principal food consisted of game, fish, corn, potatoes, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, squashes, melons, cabbages, and turnips, roots of plants, fruits, nuts, and berries. "They take but two meals a day. The hunters or fishermen never go out in the middle of the day, except it be cloudy. Their custom is to go out on an empty stomach as a stimulant to exertion in shooting game or catching fish. "They make a pottage of corn, dry pumpkins, beans and chestnuts, and fresh or dried meats, pounded, all sweetened with maple sugar or molasses, and well boiled. They also make a good dish of pounded corn and chestnuts, shellbarks and hickory nut kernels, boiled, covering the pots with large pumpkin, cabbage, or other leaves. "They make excellent preserves from cranberries and crab apples, with maple sugar. "Their bread is of two kinds; one mode of green, and the other of dry corn. If dry, it is sifted after pounding, kneaded, shaped into cakes six inches in diameter, one inch thick, and baked on clean dry ashes, of dry oak barks. If green, it is mashed, put on broad green corn blades, filled in with a ladle, well wrapped up and baked in ashes. "They make warrior's bread by parching corn, sifting it, pounding into flour, and mixing sugar. A table-spoonful with cold or boiling water is a meal, as it swells in the stomach, and if more than two spoonsful is taken, it is dangerous. Its lightness enables the warrior to go on long journeys and carry his bread with him. Their meat is boiled in pots, or roasted on wooden spits or coals." The original Indian method of making sugaV is said to have been in this manner: The sap from the maple trees was gathered and placed in large wooden troughs which they haggled out with their tomahawks. Hot stones were then thrown into the sap which was made to boil in this way, and the process continued until it was reduced to the required consistency.
