Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1894 — WHAT IS EATEN. [ARTICLE]

WHAT IS EATEN.

Exhibit of Queer Foods Used by Out-of-the-Way People. At the department of agriculture in Washington, hidden away in an obscure comer, is an odd sort of exhibit of queer foods eaten by out-of-the-way people. There is a loaf of bread made from the roasted leaves of a plant allied to the century plant. Another kind of bread is a dough of {'uniper berries. These are relished >y some tribes of Indians, while others manufacture cakes out of different kinds of bulbs. The prairie Indians relish a dish of wild turnips, which civilized people would not be likely to enjoy at all. In the great American desert the “screw beans,” which grow on mesquite bushes, are utilized for food. Soap berries furnish an agreeable diet for some savages in this country, while in California the copper-colored aborigines do not disdain the seeds of salt grask. Also in California the Digger Indians collect pinenuts, which are seeds of a certain species of pine (sometimes called “pinons”), by kindling fires against the trees, thus causing the nuts to fall out of the cones. At the same time a sweet gum exudes from the bark, serving the purpose of sugar. The seeds of gourds are consumed in the shape of mush by Indians in Arizona.

In addition to all these things the exhibit referred to includes a jar of pulverized crickets, which are eaten in that form by the Indians of Oregon. They are roasted, as are likewise grasshoppers and even slugs. These delicacies are cooked in a pit, being arranged in alternate layers with hot stones. After being thus prepared they are dried and ground to powder. They are mixed with pounded acorns or berries, the flour made in this way being kneaded into cakes and dried in the sun. The Assiniboines used a kind of seed to stop bleeding at the nose. Among other curious things used for food are acorns, sunflower seeds, grape seeds, flowers of cattails, moss from the spruce-fir tree, and the blossoms of wild clover. The exhibit embraces a number of models representing grape seeds enormously enlarged. It is actually possible to tell the species of a grape by the shape of the seed. There is a jar of red willow bark, which Indians mix with tobacco for the sake of economy. This, however, is only one of a thousand plants that are utilized in a similar fashion.