Cherokee Food and subsistence practices.
Traditional Tsalagi recipes of
the Cherokee tribe.
The Cherokee people were
hunters, gatherers, and farmers. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century women did
most of the farming, while men were responsible for hunting, fishing, and
clearing fields for planting. Women also owned the farms, homes and most
posessions, except hunting weapons.
The traditional Cherokee diet
consisted of mostly wild meat, especially wild hogs and white-tailed deer, and
corn and bean bread, pumpkins, dried fruit, and nuts, which were usually ground
into a flour to be used in other dishes.
The principle crops they grew
were maise (corn), beans, and squash. They also grew pumpkins, sunflowers, sweet
potatoes, peaches and watermelons. Around 1739, Cherokee women began growing
cotton and flax, and they became expert spinners and weavers.
During the
summer months, the Cherokee harvested large numbers of fish by putting buckeye
pulp in the rivers, which contains a poison that stunned the fish and made them
float to the surface where they could easily be gathered. They were then
barbecued and a great feast was held. Fry bread was also a Cherokee staple, as
it was with many Plains Indian tribes. In the old days, the Cherokee considered
dogs a delicacy, which helped them through leaner times.
CHEROKEE
RECIPES
From Momfeather Erickson
I do not remember where I got these, but some of it
was written in Tsalagi
Bean Bread (tu-ya ga-du)
Cook about 2
quarts of brown beans until thick and soupy, add salt to your taste Add 1/4 cup
of oil or two tablespoons of pure grease. When beans
are done and still boiling, place in a bowl 4-8 cups of yellow corn meal and 1/2
cup of oil, stir this until well incorporated, pour the boiling beans into the
corn meal about 4-6 cups or more. Pour into a well oiled pan and bake in 350
degree oven. When it is done, cut into squares and enjoy. 
Crawfish - (Ge-Dv-Nv)
Catch crawfish by
baiting them with groundhog meat or buttermilk. Pinch off tails and legs to use.
Parboil, remove hulls and fry the little meat that is left. When crisp, it is
ready to eat. Crawfish can also be used in a soup or stew after it is
fried.
Cabbage -
(U-S-Ge-Wi)
Wilt cabbage in a
small amount of grease (go-i). Add some pieces of green peppers and cook until
cabbage turns red. Serve with cornbread (se-lu ga-du).
Corn and Beans - (Se-Lu A-Su-Yi
Tsu-Ya)
Skin flour
corn with lye and cook. Cook colored beans. Put the cooked corn and beans
together and cook some more. Add pumpkin if you like, cooking until pumpkin is
done.
Add to this a
mixture of cornmeal, beaten walnuts and hickory nuts, and enough molasses to
sweeten. Cook this in an iron pot until the meal is done. Eat fresh or just
after it begins to sour. This will not keep too long after it begins to sour
unless the weather is cold.
Cornmeal Gravy (selu'si
asusdi)
Fry some meat
(about 4 pcs.side meat) Have enough grease to cover cornmeal. Add about 1/2 cup
of meal (you may wanna salt this a bit, unless you like bland) Brown the meal in
grease until light brown. Add 2 1/2 cups of milk, stir and let boil until thick.
Serve hot over any kind of bread. (This was my elisi's favorite poured on top of
hoe cakes)
Cornmeal Mush - (Selu'sa
Anista)
Corn meal
boiling water
(1
part corn meal to 4 parts water)
salt to taste
Put
water in saucepan. Cover and let it become boiling hot over the fire; then add a
tablespoon of salt. Take off the light scum from the top. Take a handful of the
cornmeal with the left hand and a pudding stick in the right (or vise versa if
you're a southpaw); then with the stick, stir the water around and by degrees
let fall the meal. When one handful is exhausted, refill it; continue to stir
and add meal until it is as thick as you can stir easily, or until the stick
will stand in it. Stir it awhile longer. Let the fire be gentle.
When it is
sufficiently cooked which will be in half an hour, it will bubble or buff up.
Turn it into a deep basin. Good eaten cold or hot, with milk or butter and syrup
or sugar, or with meat and gravy or it may be sliced when cold and
fried.
Dried Apples -
(Unikaya)
Peel and quarter
ripe apples, or slice and dry in the sun. Cook the dried apples until done. If
the cooked apple needs to be thickened, add cornmeal and cook until meal is
done.
Dried Corn Soup
1 ear dried blue
and white or other corn, removed from the cob
7 cups water (ama)
1 (2"x1") strip fat back, sliced
5 oz. dried beef
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper (do qua yo di)
Soak the corn in 2
cups water for 48 hours. Place the corn
and its soaking water in a large saucepan. Add the remaining water and the fat
back, and simmer, covered, for about 3 hours and 50 minutes or until the corn is
tender but not soft. 3. Mix in the dried beef and pepper, and simmer, stir for
10 minutes more.
Fried Squash Bread
1 cup Corn
meal 2 Summer squash -- diced
1 Egg
Water
1/4 cup Buttermilk
Cook squash in
water until soft; leave 3/4 c. water in pot. Combine other ingredients with
squash and water; mix together. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.
Ga-Na-S-Da-Tsi (Sassafras
Tea)
Red Sassafras
roots Water
To make a tea, boil
a few pieces of the root in water until
it is the desired strength. Sweeten with honey if desired. Serve hot or cold.
Note: Gather and wash the roots of
the red sassafras. Do this in the spring before the sap begins to rise. Store
for future use. Some natural food stores carry sassafrass root in a dried form.
It will resemble wood chips (the kind used when barbequeing). The "store bought"
variety work just as well. Sassafras tea tastes like watered down
rootbeer and is really very good.
Greens Salad -
(Guhitligi)
Sweet grass (Oo-Ga-Na-S-Di) - Old Field Creases
(Oo-Li-Si) - Ramps (Wa-S-Di) -
Angelica (Wa-Ne-Gi-Duhn) - Poke (Tla-Ye-De) -
Angelica (Wa-Ne-Gi-Duhn) - Poke (Tla-Ye-De) -
Parboil, salt, then cooked some more with grease
(go-i). Serve hot.
Spicewood Tea -
(Gv-nv-s-dv-tli)
Small twigs of Spicewood
Boil twigs in water and serve hot. Sweeten if
desired. Molasses or honey makes the best sweetening. Gather spicewood twigs in
the spring when the buds first appear.
Hominy Corn Drink - (Gv-no-he-nv)
Corn, field dried or parched
Wood ash lye
Water
Shell the corn (if still on the cob), and soak the kernels in wood ash lye until the skin can be removed (slipped).Remove from the lye and rinse with clear water. Drain. Beat the corn in the corn beater (ko-no-na) until it is the size of hominy. Sift the meal from the larger corn particles. Cook the larger particles in water until they are done. Thicken with a little meal. Drink this hot or wait until it sours and drink it cold. The drink may be kept for quite a while unless the weather is very hot. This was a customary drink to serve to friends who dropped by for a visit.
Huckleberry Bread (gadu
guwa)
2 cups self rising flour 1 egg
1 cup sugar
1 stick butter
1 cup milk
1 tea. vanilla
2 cups berries (Huckleberry or blueberry)
Cream eggs, butter and sugar. Add flour, milk and
vanilla. Sprinkle flour on berries to prevent them from going to the bottom.
Add berries. Bake at 350 for 40
minutes.
Leather Breeches - (Anikayosvhi
Tsuya)
1 pound fresh green beans, washed
2 quarts water
1/4 pound salt pork, diced
2 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
heavy thread
darning needle
Snap the ends off the beans and string on heavy
thread with needle. Hang in a sunny place to dry for about 2 months. To cook: Soak beans for 1 hour in the two quarts of
water. Add the salt pork, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and
simmer slowly, for 3 hours. Add more water if needed.
Potato Soup - (Nu-nv
Oo-ga-ma)
Peel white potatoes and cut them into small pieces. Boil in
water with an onion or two until potatoes and onions mash easily. After mashing,
add some fresh milk and reheat the mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste, if
desired.
Ramps - (Wa-s-di)
Gather young ramps soon after they come up. Parboil them,
wash and fry in a little grease (go-i). Meal may be added if you wish. They may
be cooked without being parboiled, or even eaten raw (if the eater is not social
minded! *smile*)
Red Sumach Drink - (Qua-lo-ga)
Shell berries off and gently rub between the palms of
your hands, being careful not to crush the berries but only the spines, drop
into water, strain, sweeten to taste and chill.
Cherokee Succotash - (Iyatsuyadisuyi
Selu)
Swamp Potatoes - (Tlawatsuhi'anehi
Nunv)
Gather and wash swamp
potatoes. Bake in oven or in ashes until they are done. Beat the cooked potatoes
in the corn beater until they are like any other meal. Use as meal is
used.
(During winter famines, many Cherokees had no other
meal except that made from the swamp potatoes.)
Sweet Corn Mixture - (Sedi Tsuya
Selu)
Skin flour corn by putting it in lye. Cook the corn
until it is done. Add beans and continue cooking until the beans are done. Add
pumpkin and cook until it is done, then add walnut (se di) meal and a little
corn meal. Add a little sugar or molasses if you'd like. Cook until the corn
meal is done.
Water
Corn meal
Gather ripe possum grapes - the kind that are still
sour after they ripen when the frost has fallen on them. Hang up for winter
use.
To
prepare: Shell off the grapes from the stems, wash, and stew them in water. When
they are done, mash in the water they were cooked in. Let this sit until the
seed settle, then strain, reserving liquid. Put the juice back on the fire and
and bring to a boil. Add a little cornmeal to thicken the juice. Continue
cooking until the meal is done. Remove from the fire and drink hot or cold.
Sweeten, if desired.
Gather old field
apricots (field apricots are the fruit of the passion flower)
Hull out the seed and pulp, and put on to boil, discarding skins. Add a tiny bit of soda to make the seeds separate from the pulp. Squash out the pulp, straining the mixture through a cloth. Drink hot.
Wanegidv (Wah-neh-gee-Duh)
Pick when tender, parboil, fry, and serve with eggs
and bread or just bread.
No comments:
Post a Comment