View
8
Download
0
Category
Preview:
Citation preview
Native History & Foodways
in the Brazos Valley and Vicinity:
Texas Master Naturalist, El Camino Real Chapter
Milano Methodist Church, May 10, 2018
Alston V. Thoms, Anthropology, TAMU
Feeding Families before HEB or Pot-Luck Arrived
Brazos County & the Post Oak Savannah, from San
Antonio to Tyler, are environmentally similar to the
oak-hickory-pine forests of eastern North America
and hence more like Atlanta, GA than Amarillo, TX
San
Antonio
Tyler
How to feed 30 this weekend, w/out HEB?
How to feed 30 this weekend, w/out HEB?
How to feed 30 this weekend, w/out HEB?
Paleo-Indian Period
prior to 10,000 years ago
Acutualistic experiment results:
27 students attending a field
school in South Africa, and
working in groups of 3-5, broke
these semi-fresh bones into small
pieces in 15 minutes
Field school and photographs by Dr. Lucinda Backwell, University of
the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2003
Mammoth bones, Duewall-Newberry site,
Brazos River, near College Station
Hunter-Gatherers-Fishers: Archaic Period: 10,000/8000 – 3500/1300 B.P.
People worked down food chain (to smaller terrestrial
animals, fish, & plants) for primary subsistence, exploiting
more comparatively high-cost foods
Hunter-Gatherers-Fishers of Late Pre-
Columbian period & early Post-Columbian (aka Late-“Prehistoric” or “Formative” in areas w/ agriculture)
ca. 2000/1300-150 B.P.
Introduction of bow & arrow; sometimes
pottery and/or agriculture into “Historic” era
Late Pre-Columbian groups were immediate
predecessors of historic-era “tribes”
Little, if any,
evidence for
pre-Columbian
agriculture
west of Trinity
River, as
agriculture
never
developed
there and H&G
lifeways
persisted into
Historic era
Agri-
culture
Hunting
&
Gathering
Agri-
culture
Agri-
culture
Agri-
culture Agri-
culture
Yegua Creek Archaeological Project
late 1600s
early 1700s
Yerpibame Payaya
Mixcal Xarame
Post Oak Savannah is food-rich with a comparative
abundance of deer and a variety of root food, as well
as nuts, fruits, and berries, and some fish
Cabeza de Vaca’s trek across S-C. North
America with two other Spaniards & Esteban,
an enslaved African, in the early 1530s
Cabeza de Vaca described Indians of the Post Oak
Savannah and vicinity as hunters & gatherers,
dependent on wild roots and deer (i.e., not practicing
any agriculture); bison were seldom encountered
Louis Berlandier
described & Sanchez y
Topia sketched (1828)
Caddo, Wichita,
Tonkawa, Comanche,
Apache in B/CS vicinity
Native American, Anglo- and African-Americans
encountered “native” Texas Indians everywhere
they attempted to settle
Native American Diversity in Brazos Valley
varied through time and across space
Yerpibame
Payaya
Cantonae
Mixcal
Xarame
Sijame
Tejas
Cocos
Meyeye
Jojuane
Tancague
Waco
Apache
Bedai
Kickapoo
Cherokee
Choctaw
Caddo
Cabeza de Vaca did not say just what kinds of roots
were most used by Indians in Post Oak Savannah, but
he did tell us that most roots were cooked in earth
ovens, some for only a few hours, others for 48 hrs.
E. camas (a lily) does not
grow densely in the Post
Oaks today, although it still
occurs densely (ca. 50/m2)
there as well as in
Blackland Prairie. It
likely grew densely in
pre-Columbian times
onions, lily family (Allium spp.)
false garlic (crow poison, Northoscordum bivalve)
Copper Lily (Habranthus texanus)
Wooly stargrass
(Hypoxis hirsuta)
Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) grows
widely and densely
bullbrier greenbrier (aka catbrier, Smilax bona-nox)
Winecup, mallow family (Callirhoe involucrata)
Thick-leaf yucca; Yucca treculeana
(formerly referred to as Yucca torreyi)
Prickly pear: tunas & nopalitos (Opuntia spp.)
Ethnographic Account:
C. Sternberg (1876)
witnessed/described a
Comanche family in
south-central OK (Cross
Timbers) cooking camas
in an earth oven
20 Hour Earth-Oven Baking
Native History and Foodways in the Post Oak
Savannah/Vicinity: Brazos Valley Perspective
Yerpibame Payaya
Mixcal Xarame
Recommended