Chapter 2
INSECTS
FORMERLY USED AS FOOD BY INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS
OF
NORTH AMERICA NORTH OF MEXICO
Taxa and life
stages consumed
Bruchidae (seed
beetles)
Algarobius (=
Bruchus) spp., larvae, pupae
Neltumius (=
Bruchus) spp., larvae, pupae
Cerambycidae
(long-horned beetles)
Ergates spiculatus Leconte, larva
Monochamus
maculosus Hald., larva
Monochamus
scutellatus Leconte, larva
Neoclytus
conjunctus Leconte, larva
Prionus
californicus Mots., larva, adult
Rhagium lineatum Olivier, larva
Xylotrechus
nauticus Mann., larva
Curculionidae
(snout beetles, weevils)
Rhynchophorus
cruentatus (Fabr.), larva
Dytiscidae
(predaceous diving beetles)
Scarabaeidae
(scarab beetles)
Cyclocephala
dimidiata Burmeister, adult
Cyclocephala
villosa Burm., adult
Phyllophaga fusca Froelich, adult
Polyphylla crinita Leconte, adult
Scientific name(s)
unrecorded
Ephydridae (shore
flies)
Ephydra cinerea Jones (= E.
gracilis Packard), pupa
Ephydra macellaria Eggar (= E.
subopaca Loew), pupa
Hydropyrus (=
Ephydra) hians Say, pupa
Oestridae (warble
flies, bot flies)
Hypoderma bovis Linn., larva
Oedemagena tarandi (Linn.), larva
Rhagionidae (snipe
flies)
Atherix sp., egg masses
with adult females
Tipulidae (crane
flies)
Holorusia
rubiginosa Loew, larva
Tipula derbyi Doane, larva
Tipula quaylii Doane, larva
Tipula simplex Doane, larva
Scientific name(s)
unreported
Belostomatidae
(giant water bugs)
Lethocerus
americanus Leidy, adult
Aphididae (aphids)
Cicadidae
(cicadas)
Anthophoridae
(digger bees)
Anthophorid
honey
Apidae (honey
bees, bumble bees)
Bombus
appositus Cresson,
larva/pupa
Bombus
nevadensis Cresson,
larva/pupa
Bombus
terricola occidentalis
Greene, larva/pupa
Bombus
vosnesenskii Radoszkowski,
larva/pupa
Cynipidae
(gall wasps, etc.)
Cynipid-produced
oak galls
Formicidae
(ants)
Camponotus sp., larva, adult
Formica rufa Linn., larva/pupa/adult?
Lasius niger Linn., larva/pupa/adult?
Myrmecocystus
melliger Forel,
honeypots
Myrmecocystus
mexicanus hortideorum McCook,
honeypots
Pogonomyrmex
californicus Buckley,
larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex
desertorum Wheeler,
larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex
occidentalis Cresson, larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex
owyheei Cole,
larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex sp., adult
Vespidae
(paper wasps, yellowjackets, hornets)
Vespula
diabolica Saussure,
larva/pupa
Vespula
pennsylvanica Saussure,
larva/pupa
Vespula spp., larvae/pupae
Rhinotermitidae
(subterranean termites)
Reticulitermes
tibialis Banks
Scientific
name(s) unreported
Arctiidae
(tiger moths, etc.)
Arctia caja
americana Harris, larva
Lasiocampidae
(tent caterpillars)
Malacosoma spp., larvae
Megathymidae
(giant skippers)
Megathymus
yuccae Boisduval &
Leconte, larva
Noctuidae
(noctuids)
Heliothis zea
Boddie, larva
Homoncocnemis
fortis Grote, larva
Spodoptera
frugiperda Smith, larva
Saturniidae
(giant silk moths)
Coloradia
pandora Blake, larva,
pupa
Hyalophora (=
Platysamia; = Samia) euryalus Boisduval,
larva (see Essig 1958, Arnett 1985)
Sphingidae
(sphinx or hawk moths)
Hyles lineata
Fabr., larva
Manduca sexta
Johannsen (= Macrosila
carolina (author?)), larva
Scientific name(s) unreported
Aeshnidae
(darners)
Aeshna
multicolor Hagen, nymph
Scientific
name(s) unreported
Acrididae
(short-horned grasshoppers)
Arphia
pseudonietana Thomas,
adult
Camnula
pellucida Scudder, adult
Melanoplus
bivittatus Say, adult
Melanoplus
devastator Scudder,
adult
Melanoplus
differentialis Thomas,
adult
Melanoplus
femurrubrum DeGeer,
adult
Melanoplus
sanguinipes Fabr. (= M.
mexicanus mexicanus Suassure;
reported as M. atlanis Riley by Essig 1931), adult
Melanoplus sp.
Oedaloenotus
enigma Scudder, adult
Schistocerca
Shoshone Thomas (= S.
venusta Scudder), adult
Gryllacrididae
(wingless long-horned grasshoppers)
Stenopelmatus
fuscus Haldeman
Gryllidae
(crickets)
Gryllus
assimilis Fabr., complex
Tettigoniidae
(long-horned grasshoppers)
Isoperla sp., nymph, adult
Pteronarcidae
(giant stoneflies)
Pteronarcys
californica Newport,
nymph, adult
As with
indigenous populations nearly everywhere, North American Indian tribes made
wide use of insects as food. Dozens of
species have been recorded or are highly suspect on the basis of distribution,
abundance and ecology. Data on the use
of insects in aboriginal cultures are primarily of two types, ethnographic and
archaeological, and it has been particularly necessary to draw upon the full
range of methodology in North America where the original cultures have been so
completely enveloped by a later European-derived culture. Ethnographic data are derived from direct
observations by anthropologists, observations by non-anthropologists (e.g.,
ethnohistoric accounts), memory culture, continuation of practices into the
present, and inferences from ethnographic data from neighboring groups. Sutton (1988: 1-10) points out pitfalls relative to the
gathering and interpretation of each kind, and provides some insight as to why
the importance of insect consumption in aboriginal societies has been
under-reported and underestimated.
Sutton
points out that few of the observers were trained in anthropology, and fewer
yet in the natural sciences. Observers
from European cultural backgrounds were often biased in their observations of
insect consumption or disregarded it entirely.
In addition, as insects were usually processed and fragmented, they
often could not be recognized by ethnographers, and so were not recorded. As a result, Sutton concludes that it is
probable that a much greater number and variety of insects were utilized by the
Indians of the Great Basin than has been reported. In addition, misidentifications appear to
have been frequent, e.g., the term "locust" used interchangeably for
grasshoppers, crickets and cicadas. This
affects conclusions as to seasonality, technology employed, and caloric return,
and thus can lead to an underestimation of the importance of insects in the
aboriginal diet and a corresponding overestimation of the importance of other
dietary components.
Relative
to archaeological data, poor preservation and inadequate field and laboratory
methods result in a paucity of data.
Sutton discusses reasons for this, and why even coprolite analysis is
not as fruitful as might be expected.
Coprolite evidence exists for the use of several kinds of insects. Sutton notes that insect remains are
frequently encountered during flotation analyses of soil samples from features
and hearths in archaeological sites, but they generally are not identified
because they are considered unimportant.
Coprolites could yield much more information than has been the case to
date. "The recovery of
archaeological evidence of insect use suffers most from indifference,
disinterest, or ignorance on the part of archaeologists who are not attuned to
the recovery of such data."
Flotation samples must be given special attention and new data recovery
techniques must be employed.
As far
as known, insects never comprised the staple in any economy, but they
were often critical resources that were more than an occasional addition to the
diet. Sutton notes that Great Basin
investigators are now beginning to study resources in view of their seasonal
availability, nutritional content, and search and processing time, but, noting
the usually cursory treatment of insect consumption by anthropologists, he
states (p. 2): "From an ecological
standpoint, an understanding of, or at least a delineation of, all parts of an
economic system is necessary for an understanding of the system as a whole and
of its interactions with other systems."
Many components, including insects are poorly known. Anthropologists often consider that insects
are "famine food and backup resources, usually taken on an individual
encounter basis," yet, Sutton states (p. 3): "While it is probably true that insects
were taken individually during the course of other activities, the overall
procurement of insects appears to have been systematic and not confined to
chance." He concludes that,
"insects were commonly and extensively used and that they played an
important part in fulfilling the nutritive requirements of the Great Basin
Indians."
Sutton
concluded that crickets, grasshoppers, shore flies, caterpillars, and ants were
the most significant insect resources and they were utilized by almost every
Great Basin group. Other insects,
including bees, yellowjackets, aphids, mesquite beetles, june beetles,
stoneflies and lice were also eaten but in lesser quantity. Sutton disagrees with the view that insects
were mostly obtained on an "encounter" basis, stating that, "the
ethnohistoric and ethnographic data indicate that considerable planning,
travel, and effort was often involved in insect procurement." Such effort suggests that aboriginal groups
were knowledgeable about the seasonal and geographic availability of insects
and that the insect resources were fully integrated into aboriginal economic
systems. Although fresh insects were
available primarily from April to October, many accounts specify that insect
foods were stored for later use, often in large quantities. According to Sutton, "Stored insects,
combined with stored plant products (with which insects were often mixed) may
have formed a balanced diet providing for a comfortable winter."
Although
cost/benefit ratios for collecting most insect resources have not been
determined, Sutton notes that studies have shown high return rates for Mormon
crickets and grasshoppers. Collecting
and processing of insects in the Great Basin was conducted primarily by women,
although in "drives" requiring the participation of many people, men,
women and children probably participated.
In
summary, Sutton concludes that insects probably constituted a major rather than
a minor resource in the Great Basin, and states that "Anthropologists
should continue to seek elucidation of the use of insect foods, both ethnographically
and archaeologically, and should consider insect foods important resources that
were fully integrated into the various economies of the aboriginal Great
Basin."
The
point made by Sutton that if the role of insects in North American aboriginal
economies is underestimated, the role of other components is therefore
overestimated and we lack an accurate understanding of the systems as a whole,
is of particular interest and has wide implications. If this is true for North America, it is
probably equally true for Africa, Asia and elsewhere inasmuch as most of the
early information was furnished by Europeans.
The historical record of insect consumption may be an excellent example
of history distorted by being seen only through the eyes of those who wrote it.
Several
points come into focus as one peruses the North American literature:
1. Insect consumption was widespread among
tribes in western North America, but not in the eastern part of the
continent. Waugh (1916)
and Carr (1951) are among the few reports from east of the
Mississippi River. On the other hand,
not all western tribes used insects (see Dorsey 1884, Ray 1933, Voegelin
1938, and Barnett 1939, for example). Hoffman (1896) suggested that
the Menomini did not eat insects and other "loathsome food" because
they had "always lived in a country where game, fish, and small fruits
were found in greater or lesser abundance," and Skinner (1910)
suggests that "the universal practice of agriculture south of the Great
Lakes" obviated any need for insects as food.
The
reasons suggested by Hoffman and Skinner would seem to be discounted, however,
by numerous reports from the West that the Indians relished insects in the
midst of abundant food resources. Dixon
(1905) states, regarding the Northern Maidu in the lower Sierra region,
"Of animal food [deer, elk, rabbits, etc.] there was an abundance. . . .
Yellow-jacket larvae were, however, eagerly sought, as were also
angle-worms. Grasshoppers, locusts, and
crickets were highly esteemed, and in their dried condition were much used in
trade." Muir (1911),
described a great variety and abundance of foods, then stated, "Strange to
say, they seem to like the lake larvae [Hydropyrus hians pupae] best of
all." According to Ross (1956),
despite a profusion of salmon, buffalo and vegetables, the Snake Indians resort
to "the most nauseous and disgusting articles of food," such as
crickets, grasshoppers and ants.
2. Insects were an integral part of the seasonal
rounds of food gathering. This is
evident in many reports, but quick insight on the role of insects within the
context of food gathering can be provided by quoting from the excellent and
concise description by Emma Lou Davis (1962) of the seasonal
activities and locations of the Mono Lake Paiute. Mono Lake is located at the base of the
Sierra Nevada, within the Upper Sonoran Life Zone at an elevation of 6,400
feet. Davis states (p. 24):
Due to this climatic variability and
to the range in altitudes the area offered a wide range of seasonal foods which
were attractive to hunter-gatherers.
From April through October different natural food crops matured in turn
throughout the territory. The activities
of the Mono Lake Paiute, and of other aboriginal travelers and visitors, were
geared to this cycle of food events. At
each season the people had different sorts of camps, in different places and
with significantly different artifact assemblages.
The Kuzedika had only a stone-age
tool kit, [but] their culture was characterized by a number of highly developed
specialties which permitted them to cope successfully with their unpredictable
environment. In common with other
Basin-Plateau peoples they possessed a diversified complex of beautifully made
baskets, permitting them to collect, toast and winnow tiny seeds and fine meal.
They used metates and manos,
mortars, stone bowls, and pestles. With
this milling equipment they could reduce hard or tough foods to an edible
consistency. They made warm fur robes by
weaving twined strips of rabbit pelt into a fibre warp. They understood how to process and store
protein foods. Most particularly, they
had an encyclopedic knowledge of the ecology of which they formed a part. They were clever at devising ways of
harvesting every seed, grub and rat in their habitat. They ate everything they could digest and
knew precisely where and when it could be found and the best means of procuring
it.
The staffs of life of the Kuzedika
were greens, roots and fruits; seeds of grasses; fly larvae [actually Hydropyrus
hians pupae], pine tree caterpillars [Coloradia pandora larvae],
rodents, lizards, rabbits and occasional large game. The great winter staple was pine nuts. . . .
During an average year the Paiute
schedule of camping and collecting ran as follows: In winter, the groups broke up into separate
families. The families lived either in
the pine nut groves, close to their caches of nuts, or else in sheltered coves
around the warmer east end of the lake.
Here they subsisted on rodents and stored foods. . . .
In March, when the sun and the deer
returned, Kuzedika families moved to the west end of the lake and camped on
sunny, well-drained knolls near streams with gallery forests of aspens. The first new food activities in spring were
the hunting of deer and the collecting of fresh greens for which the people
were starved. . . .
By June groups of people moved down
to the summer grass sites. . . . These meadow camps served as a base for
collecting grass seeds, berries, roots and tubers. They were also a point of departure for more
distant and varied collecting activities.
Each summer the whole population migrated to the lake shores in order to
gather and process fly larvae, which piled up in windrows along the beaches. Open camps appear to have extended for miles
along high strand lines at the west end of the lake, where fresh water was
available. The wealth of food near the
lake attracted other people from miles around.
Even the unfriendly Washo paid regular visits to Mono Lake. The high percentage of projectile points
(some of them very large spear points) at beach sites suggests defensiveness or
an armed truce. . . .
In addition to its appeal as a food
larder, Mono Lake basin was a cross-roads for trade and travel [and] many other
people came and went through the home range of the Kuzedika. This situation was, of course, a potential
source of inter-group friction but appears only occasionally to have caused
outbreaks of armed hostility. The Paiute
were not an aggressive people and territoriality was but weakly developed among
these transient collectors.
On alternate summers, in the early
part of July, the Kuzedika and scattered groups of visitors migrated 15 miles
south to the Jeffrey pine forests near Indiana Summit. Here the caterpillars of a moth, Coloradia
pandora, completed their biennial cycle and emerged to feed on the pine
needles. Smudge fires were built;
circular trenches (still faintly visible) were dug around the bases of selected
trees. The trapped and stupified worms
were then collected, sun-dried and stored in slab shelters, a few of which are
still standing.
If the year were favorable, autumn
brought in the most important of all food crops: the pine nuts. Families worked together to amass great piles
of green cones, still tightly closed to protect the contained nuts. The cones were piled within retaining rings
of stones, covered with grass, boughs and slabs of rock and left as winter
stores. . . . If the harvest of pinyon nuts had been an adequate one, families
built brush tipis with countersunk floors and wintered near their caches. In the scattered winter communities people
trapped small game, gambled at Nayel'we, the popular Hand Game, told myths in
endless song-recitive during the long evenings and waited for the returning sun
to bring another cycle of collecting.
3. Some insects undoubtedly yielded a very high
energy return for the energy expended in their harvest. Although few experimental data are available,
this seems especially evident from the many vivid accounts of grasshopper and
Mormon cricket "drives" (see under Orthoptera: Acrididae and Tettigoniidae) and the
large-scale harvests of shore fly pupae (Diptera: Ephydridae) and pandora moth caterpillars
(Lepidoptera: Saturniidae). Madsen and Kirkman (1988)
describe a special, but recurring, situation in which the return rate from
collection of grasshoppers washed ashore at Great Salt Lake was at least 16
times that of any local seed resource. Madsen
(1989) provides data suggesting that the return rates from Mormon crickets
collected by hand exceeded those from all local plant resources and compared
favorably with those from small and large game animals. It is likely that return rates from Mormon
crickets collected during the large, organized drives described by early
observors would have far exceeded those that can be obtained by
hand-collecting. Simms (1984),
although he makes no mention of edible insects, provides useful information on
the kilocalories returned per hour of work for various Great Basin collected
food resources, both plant and animal.
4. Insects, when dried, were storable for use in
the future and were an important winter food.
Grasshoppers, Mormon crickets, shore fly pupae, pandora moth
caterpillars, cicadas and ants were among the insects stored (e.g., Dixon
1905, Elliott 1909, Muir 1911, Steward 1941, Davis
1965, and Downs 1966, among others).
5. Insects were important items of trade among
tribes (e.g., Dixon 1905, Steward 1933, J. Davis 1961),
with grasshoppers, pandora caterpillars and shore fly pupae among the insects
most widely traded. Accounts of Indian
attempts to trade their edible insect preparations to Whites, however, are
frequently humorous (see, for example, Bidwell 1890). Disputes concerning insect collecting rights
sometimes arose among Indian tribes or individual families. Steward (1933: 245-246), for
example, cites Muir to the effect that families and tribes claimed sections of
the shore at Mono Lake where the windrows of shore fly pupae washed up and
disputes arose over encroachment into a neighbor's territory. Regarding pandora caterpillars, Miller
and Hutchinson (1928: 158-160) related that "...the
Monos, lured by the tempting collecting grounds, had crossed the range [the
Sierra Nevada] and gathered caterpillars from areas that were considered
exclusive worming grounds of another tribe.
This caused a serious break in diplomatic relations between the two
tribes and very nearly resulted in a great Pe-ag'gie war."
Conversely
to most reports, Heizer (1978) shows only three recorded
ethnographic instances of insects traded as food items from one tribe to
another in California.
Essig's (1931)
discussion is of particular interest because it is the first to provide the
specific identity (scientific names) of many of the insects that were, or
probably were, used as food in western North America. His information is incorporated under the
appropriate insect orders below. Essig
(1934), as did Davis (1962) and others later, extolled the intimate
knowledge of the Indians about natural history, including the life cycles and
habits of insects. He says (page 181):
Indians probably knew a great deal
more about certain facts concerning the natural instincts and habits of insects
than the white race will ever know. The
aborigines of California literally lived with their tiny six-legged brothers
and liked them in more ways than one.
Apparently there were no feelings of rivalry on the part of the red men
as is so often expressed to-day by the entomological economists who class
insects as man's greatest rivals on this earth.
The Indians accepted nature as it was without carrying out any great
schemes to replace the forests and the prairies with cultivated fields and
great cities.
Finally,
although our discussion here is limited to food, insects were much more than
food in the lives of the Indians. Hitchcock
(1962) has discussed a number of aspects in Indian culture, including
the spiritual power of insects; insects as omens and symbols; their use in
medicine, magic and witchcraft; influence on the growth and development of
children; use of products for various purposes such as ornaments, artwork,
dyes, not to mention honey and beeswax; domestication of insects of various
kinds; use as food (briefly); and the Indian view of insect control. Hitchcock, as did Essig before him, suggests
that the American Indian had a much more intimate view of himself in relation
to nature than we do and insects were part of the world around him. Indians in general did not regard insects as
pests in the same manner that we do.
This was partly because the Indian economy was such that insects did not
make such recognizable demands on it and partly because of their spiritual and
other importance. A point made by both Hitchcock
and Essig is that, in general, those groups that made the most use of
insects or insect products had great knowledge about the biology and
identification of their insects, a principle that we will see applies to
indigenous people in other continents as well.
DeFoliart (1991)
listed more than 70 species of insects known or presumed to have been used as
food by North American tribes. Included were representatives of 12 insect
orders and 28 families. DeFoliart (1994)
described a number of insect foods of the American Indians and incidents showing
how early whites reacted to them. The
author concluded: "As might be expected from our European cultural
heritage, some early American whites looked with open disgust at the insect
foods of the American Indians. It is
interesting, though, that so often . . . . these cross-cultural encounters
relative to food seemed dominated by feelings of mutual tolerance, curiosity
and respect and were described with a sense of humor."
Ikeda
et al
(1993) reported that some 500 descendants of Miwok-speaking Native
Americans live in Mariposa County, California, and that 50 percent of the
families live below the federal poverty level and are unable to afford the kind
of food that ensures an adequate diet.
The authors report:
Some families augmented their food
supply in traditional ways: 47% gathered wild berries, nuts, mushrooms and
other plants; 67% said their grandparents and parents traditionally used wild
plants as foods, and 81% said this knowledge had been passed on to them by
their elders. . .[22% gardened, 26% fished, 14% hunted] . . . Many Miwok
recalled foods their grandparents ate that they do not eat: insects such as
pine tree worms, Monarch butterfly larvae and grasshoppers; animals like
squirrel, Mono Lake shrimp, quail, deer, rabbit, bear and hedge hog; and plant
foods such as acorn mush, pine nuts, wild vegetables and berries. Some of these foods, particularly the
insects, are not considered food by the dominant culture. This may have influenced these Native
Americans to abandon them as food sources.
Sutton (1995)
reiterates the importance of insects in prehistoric diet and technology and of
their procurement in determining settlement/subsistence patterns. He also
re-emphasizes and expands on his 1988 criticisms of "Western bias" on
the part of anthropologists, ethnographers and archaeologists in assessing the
role of insects, especially as food. In
the interpretation of study results, there is an over-emphasis on male-oriented
subsistence activities and "big ticket" economic animals, particularly
mammals, while insects, which are not very mobile, are considered part of
"gathering" which is done by women and children. The author discusses in detail the reasons
for the low archaeological "visibility" of insects.
See
also Lowie (1909b, insects as food of the Assiniboine) and Osborne (1923,
insects in coprolites).
Coleoptera
Bruchidae (seed beetles)
Algarobius (= Bruchus) spp., larvae, pupae
Neltumius (= Bruchus) spp., larvae, pupae
Sutton (1988: 57-60) notes that bruchid beetles constituted
an "automatic inclusion of animal protein in processed mesquite."
Three genera of bruchids common in mesquite in North America are Algarobius,
Neltumius and Mimosestes (Kingsolver et al 1977: 113,
Table 6-3). There may be as many as
three generations per year, and as many as 80% of the pods may be infested by
the latter part of the season (Glendening and Paulsen 1955:
9; vide Sutton 1988), thus it was almost axiomatic that the bruchids would be a
part of mesquite harvest. Regarding the
harvest of mesquite pods, Bell and Castetter (1937:
22-23); vide Sutton 1988: 59) observed:
When stored in the form of whole or
dry pods, partially pulverized, they soon became a living mass, since an
insect, a species of Bruchus, was present in almost every seed. To the Pima or any other tribe of Indians,
this made little difference. The insects
were not removed but accepted as an agreeable ingredient of the flour,
subsequently made from the beans. If
reduced to a fine flour soon after gathering, the larvae still remained within
the beans and became a part of the meal, forming an homogenous mass of animal
and vegetable matter.
Hooper (1920: 357)
noted that the Desert Cahuilla ate mesquite beans that were "worm eaten in
spots, but regardless of this, they are all pounded together."
Bye (1972: 94)
gives the history of the botanical collections made by Edward Palmer and John
Wesley Powell and reviews the ethnobiology of the southern Paiutes, which lived
in southern Utah, adjacent northern Arizona, and southern Nevada. Relative to the mesquite, Prosopis
glandulosa Torr. var. torreyana, and the screwbean, P. pubescens
Benth., the fruits of which were important as food, especially the starchy
inner portions and the seeds, often contained Bruchus larvae which were
eaten along with the fruits. Now that
bruchid-containing pods have become unacceptable to some tribes such as the
Pima and Cahuilla, infestations can be controlled by heat-treatment as is the
Seri custom in Mexico (Felger 1977: 163).
Mesquite
seeds in a cached ceramic olla, or storage jar, recovered from CA-RIV-519 in
southeastern California (ethnographic territory of the Desert Cahuilla, and
radiocarbon dated to within the past several hundred years), showed evidence of
insect activity within the bean matrix (Swenson 1984: 249). This was probably the result of bruchid
beetles infesting the beans when they were still nutritionally viable.
Cerambycidae (long-horned beetles)
Ergates spiculatus Leconte, larva
Monochamus maculosus Hald., larva
Monochamus scutellatus Leconte, larva
Neoclytus conjunctus Leconte, larva
Prionus californicus Mots., larva, adult
Rhagium lineatum Olivier, larva
Xylotrechus nauticus Mann., larva
Essig (1931)
states that the fat wood-boring cerambycid grubs, some of which measure up to 60
mm in length, were especially relished by the California Indians. Species mentioned include: Ergates spiculatus Leconte and Prionus
californicus Mots. (obtained from old logs and stumps of coniferous trees,
and the latter also from various deciduous trees); Rhagium lineatum
Olivier (beneath the bark of dead pine trees in the foothills and lowlands
during the winter and spring); Xylotrechus nauticus Mann., Neoclytus
conjunctus Lec. and other species of these genera (under the bark of
various deciduous trees); Monochamus maculosus Hald., and M.
scutellatus Lec. (in fire-scorched, injured and dead coniferous
trees). These and "countless"
other kinds of cerambycid grubs from all kinds of vegetation were dug out and
eaten, usually raw.
Roust (1967: 56,
82) reported adults of Prionus sp. (probably californicus) in
prehistoric human coprolites from Lovelock Cave in western Nevada. The heads of the beetles were not found,
"indicating that they were either bitten or torn off prior to ingestion,
without chewing, of the whole beetle."
See
also Powers (1877a, cerambycids as a food of the Nishinam of Pacer County,
California) and Zigmond (1986, as a food of the Kawaiisu). It is surprising that, considering the
extensive worldwide use of cerambycid grubs, and that hundreds of species occur
in North America, there have been so few reports of their use as food here.
Curculionidae (snout beetles, weevils)
Rhynchophorus cruentatus (Fabr.), larva
Ghesquièré (1947)
indicates by the following (translation) that this species was consumed:
"In his interesting History of Entomology, Essig (1931) devoted a
chapter to edible insects in North America; however, he neglects palmicoles in
it and does not cite (cf. Bowdman, 1888, and Kunze, 1916) the boring Rhynchophorus
cruentatus of the saw palmetto and the date tree, whose larvae are
nevertheless eaten by the natives."
The species occurs in Florida and nearby states in the southeastern
United States, and southward through the Caribbean region.
Dytiscidae (predaceous diving beetles)
Cybister explanatus (author?), adult
Roust (1967)
reported adults of Cybister sp. (explanatus?) (pp. 56, 60, 84) in
prehistoric human coprolites from Lovelock Cave in western Nevada, and C.
explanatus and unidentified insect parts in prehistoric human coprolites
from nearby Hidden Cave (p. 66). As with
the cerambycid adults mentioned above, the heads had been bitten or torn off
prior to ingestion, without chewing, of the whole beetles.
Also
see Hrdlicka (1908, dytiscids as a food of the Tarahumare, southwestern U.S.).
Scarabaeidae (scarab beetles).
Cyclocephala dimidiata Burmeister, adult
Cyclocephala villosa Burm., adult
Phyllophaga fusca Froelich, adult
Polyphylla crinita Leconte, adult
Indians
in Madera County, California, were reported to have regularly eaten the adults
of "the white-striped June beetle," Polyphylla crinita Leconte
(Essig 1931). Sutton (1988:79)
reports (via personal communication from Nancy Peterson Walter) that the Owens
Valley and Mono Lake Paiute roasted June beetles (possibly Phyllophaga fusca)
as late as 1981. These insects may have
been used by other groups as well, but there are no other specific data. Sutton
notes that other June beetles occurring in the desert areas of Arizona and
California include Cyclocephala villosa and C. dimidiata.
Miscellaneous Coleoptera
White
grubs from the soil and weevil grubs in nuts are mentioned by Essig (1931)
as food in California, but no specific observations are mentioned. Essig notes that the larvae of leaf beetles
(Chrysomelidae) and ladybird beetles (Coccinellidae) were probably not eaten
because of their offensive body secretions.
According to Ebeling (1986: 368), the Cahuilla used as
food an insect (probably a beetle larva) gathered from Australian saltbush (an
introduced plant) when it bloomed.
Diptera
Ephydridae (shore flies)
Ephydra cinerea Jones (= E. gracilis Packard), pupa
Ephydra macellaria Egger (= E. subopaca Loew),
pupa
Hydropyrus (= Ephydra) hians Say, pupa
There are numerous reports on the
harvesting of shore flies, mainly the pupae of Hydropyrus (= Ephydra)
hians Say, and their use was undoubtedly widespread. They were traded, and some groups traveled
long distances to obtain them. They were
available in great quantities and were storable enough to serve as winter
provisions. Sutton (1988: 45)
notes that other species of shore flies were probably also used, particularly Ephydra
cinerea Jones (= gracilis Packard) which coexists with H. hians
in the Great Salt Lake and elsewhere.
The presence of two sizes is mentioned in one early ethnographic
reference, and E. cinerea is much smaller than H. hians. Although the larvae were frequently mentioned
as the stage consumed, Ebeling (1986: 103-104) and others have
noted that it is primarily the pupae that wash up on shore where collection
occurs.
Zenas
Leonard, in his narrative of his travels written in 1839 (Wagner 1904:
166-167), writes of the Pai-utes (or Diggers) at Humboldt Lake: "When the wind rolls the waters onto the
shore, these flies [shore flies] are left on the beach - the female Indians
then carefully gather them into baskets made of willow branches, and lay them
exposed to the sun until they become perfectly dry, when they are laid away for
winter provender. These flies, together
with grass seed, and a few rabbits, is their principal food during the winter
season." (Ebeling, 1986:
104, citing E. Strong, 1969, identifies Ephydra subopaca Packard
as the species, and Great Salt Lake as the locality referred to in this
account.)
Fremont (1845: 154
[1988 reprint]) described [what lake?] a windrow 10-20 feet in breadth and 7-12
inches in depth, composed entirely of the "skins of worms, about the size
of a grain of oats, which had been washed up by the waters of the lake." Alluding to this later, Fremont tells of an
old hunter, Mr. Joseph Walker, who informed him that:
. . . wandering with a party of men
in a mountain country east of the great California range, he surprised a party
of several Indian families encamped near a small salt lake, who abandoned their
lodges at his approach, leaving everything behind them. Being in a starving condition, they were
delighted to find in the abandoned lodges a number of skin bags, containing a
quantity of what appeared to be fish, dried and pounded. On this they made a hearty supper; and were
gathering around an abundant breakfast the next morning, when Mr. Walker
discovered that it was with these, or a similar worm, that the bags had been
filled. The stomachs of the stout
trappers were not proof against their prejudices, and the repulsive food was
suddenly rejected. Mr. Walker had
further opportunities of seeing these worms used as an article of food; and I
am inclined to think they are the same as those we saw, and appear to be a
product of the salt lakes.
In the
account of the 1859 expedition of Capt. J.W. Davidson to Owens Valley (Wilke
and Lawton 1976), it is stated (p. 30):
Another very plentiful addition to
their means of subsistence is the Larvae of dipterous insects. These are seen floating upon the surface of
Owen's Lake in masses (agglomerated) about the size of a nutmeg, and the
Indians gather them at this season as they are driven ashore by the winds. They then dry them and separate, by threshing
and winnowing, the shells, or skeletons, of the Larva from the grub, which they
pack away in cakes. I may safely say
that I saw hundreds of bushels of this food, in process of preparation and
prepared. The Indians inform me that
these deposits are of yearly occurrence. . . .
Brewer (1930:
417), who visited Mono Lake in 1863 described it as follows:
No fish or reptile lives in it, yet
it swarms with millions of worms, which develop into flies. These rest on the surface and cover
everything on the immediate shore. The
number and quantity of these worms and flies is absolutely incredible. They drift up in heaps along the shore -- hundreds
of bushels could be collected. They
only grow at certain seasons of the year.
The Indians come far and near to gather them. The worms are dried in the sun, the shell
rubbed off, when a yellowish kernal remains, like a small yellow grain of
rice. This is oily, very nutritious, and
not unpleasant to the taste, and under the name of koo-chah-bee forms a
very important article of food. The
Indians gave me some; it does not taste bad, and if one were ignorant of its
origin, it would make fine soup. Gulls,
ducks, snipe, frogs, and Indians fatten on it.
Browne (1865:
111-113) described encountering a deposit of "worms" [actually the
pupae of Hydropyrus hians Say], about two feet deep and three or four
feet wide, which extended "like a vast rim" around the shores of Mono
Lake, one of several highly alkaline lakes in the California-Nevada area:
I saw no end to it during a walk of
several miles along the beach. . . . It would appear that the worms, as soon as
they attain the power of locomotion, creep up from the water, or are deposited
on the beach by the waves during some of those violent gales which prevail in
this region. The Mono Indians derive
from them a fruitful source of subsistence.
By drying them in the sun and mixing them with acorns, berries,
grass-seeds, and other articles of food gathered up in the mountains, they make
a conglomerate called cuchaba, which they use as a kind of bread. I am told it is very nutritious and not at
all unpalatable. The worms are also
eaten in their natural condition. It is
considered a delicacy to fry them in their own grease. When properly prepared by a skillful cook
they resemble pork 'cracklings.' I was
not hungry enough to require one of these dishes during my sojourn, but would
recommend any friend who may visit the lake to eat a pound or two and let me
know the result at his earliest convenience. . . . There must be hundrds,
perhaps thousands of tons of these oleaginous insects cast up on the beach
every year. There is no danger of
starvation on the shores of Mono. The
inhabitants may be snowed in, flooded out, or cut off by aboriginal hordes, but
they can always rely upon the beach for fat meat.
Palmer (1871: 426)
states that the "ke-chah-re" from Mono Lake are dried and pulverized,
then mixed with meal made from acorns, to be sun-dried or baked as bread, or
mixed with water and boiled with hot stones for soup.
Loew (1876: 189)
states, in describing Owens Lake: "Neither
fish nor mollusks can exist, but some forms of lower animal life are plentiful,
as infusoriae, copepoda, and larvae of insects." Loew continues:
. . . one of the most striking
phenomena is the occurrence of a singular fly, that covers the shore of the
lake in a stratum 2 feet in width and 2 inches in thickness, and occurs nowhere
else in the county; only at Mono Lake, another alkaline lake, it is seen
again. The insect is inseparable from
the alkaline water, and feeds upon the organic matter of the above-named alga
[species not known] that is washed in masses upon the shore. In the larva state it inhabits the alkaline
lake, in especially great numbers in August and September, and the squaws
congregate here to fish with baskets for them.
Dried in the sun and mixed with flour, they serve as a sort of bread of
great delicacy for the Indians.
Hoffman (1878:
465-466) reported as follows, presumably in relation to H. hians:
The Pah-Utes in the southwestern
portion of Nevada, and even across the line into California, consume the larvae
of flies found upon the borders of some 'alkali' lakes. The organic matter
washed ashore is soon covered with flies, where they deposit their eggs; there
being not sufficient nourishment for all the worms, some die, when more eggs
are deposited, and so on ad infinitum, until there is a belt of
swarming, writhing worms from 2 to 4 feet broad, and from an inch to 3 inches
in depth. This was the exact condition
on the shore of Owen's Lake, California, in August, which appears to be the
favorable season. At such localities the
Indians congregate, scoop up and pack all that can be transported for present
and future use. When thoroughly dried,
it is ground into meal, and prepared and eaten as by the Shoshonees.
Williston
(1883)
studied a sample of dipterous larvae and adults sent to him from the Soda Lakes
near Ragtown, Nevada, and found them identical with material from Mono
Lake. Williston described the adult of
the Soda Lakes material under the name, Ephydra californica Packard (the
adult of which was not previously described), while noting that differences are
apparent in the larval stages and the Soda Lakes specimens may in fact
represent E. hians. Williston
quotes from an earlier source: "The
water [Soda Lakes] appears to be wanting in animal life, with the exception of
a minute fly, the larva of which is a small worm, accumulating in such large
quantities as to form a belt a foot wide along the shore. It is occasionally gathered by the Pah-Ute
Indians, and, after drying and pulverizing, made into a sort of meal or
flour." Williston also quotes
extensively from correspondence with Prof. W.H. Brewer whose notes regarding
Mono Lake were later published (see Brewer 1930).
Hutchings
(1888:
427-428) describes the collection of fly larvae and pupae which occurs each
summer along the western edge of Mono Lake:
At such times every available
native, young and old, and of both sexes, repairs to Mono Lake with baskets of
all kinds and sizes, old coal-oil cans, and such articles; and, collecting this
foam with its living tenants, repair to the nearest fresh water stream (Mono
Lake water being impregnated with strong alkalies), and there wash away the
foam, while retaining all the larvae and pupae.
This is spread upon flat rocks to dry; and when cured, is called
'Kit-chavi,' and thenceforward forms one of the luxuries of Indian food, and
becomes their substitute for fresh butter!
Hutchings continues:
"Before participating therefore in the festivities of a morning or
evening meal, this appetizing addition is made to their acorn mush-bread; when
all sit, or kneel, around the unctuous viands, and with his or her two front
fingers, converted for the time being into a spoon, help themselves to this
unique repast, all eating from the same basket."
Kroeber (1925: 592;
vide Sutton 1988: 47) reported that the Panamint exploited the flies from Owens
Lake.
Essig (1931)
discusses earlier reports on use of the larvae of Ephydra hians
Say by the Mono and Koso (Shoshone) and Paiute tribes and known as koo-tsabe
or koo-chah-bee by the latter.
Reagan
(1934a: 54) states that the Goshutes (Shoshone)of Deep Creek country in
Utah were alleged to have made soup of fly larvae, presumably Hydropyrus.
Heizer (1950),
with his customary diligence in searching out the literature on a subject,
cites a number of papers and articles which are not included here, on the use
of kutsavi (H. hians) by the western Indians.
Lawton
et al
(1976) believe that probably the reason the Paiute did not develop
irrigated agriculture in the southern part of their range was that they were
able to obtain large quantities of kutsavi or koochabie from
Owens Lake, thereby exploiting a more nutritive food source than the northern
proto-agriculturists were able to exploit by irrigating their fields of chufas
and grass nuts. They state (p. 42):
One reason irrigation may not have
been practiced near Owens Lake is because of the abundance of kutsavi,
the larvae of a small fly, Ephydra (Hydropyrus =) hians
Say, which formerly occurred in the alkaline waters of Owens Lake. . . .
Irrigation was not practiced at Mono Lake either, according to Steward, nor was
it recorded by Von Schmidt who surveyed that region in 1857. Mono Lake is located at about 7000 feet,
perhaps too high for successful irrigation of yellow nut-grass and
wild-hyacinth. However, here again, the
fly larvae occur in abundance (see Heizer 1950) and would have provided a
reliable winter staple that involved less effort to obtain than irrigating and
harvesting wild plant foods. Steward (1933: 256) indicated that the larvae were
also present in Walker Lake at the terminus of Walker River Valley. Thus, the Indians in all of these regions
would have had a reliable winter food resource lacking in the northern and
central Owens Valley.
According
to Irwin (1980: 47), the Shoshoni called Hydropyrus hians
larvae Bishawa'da and the flies (or pupae?) ing ga'da or ing
ga'ra.
Sutton (1988: 49)
reports (Nancy Peterson Walter, pers. comm. 1985) that Hydropyrus pupae
were apparently collected from Mono Lake in numbers even as late as the late
1970s.
Also
see Chalfant (1922, as food of the Eastern Monos [Owens Valley Piute]), E.
Davis (1963, 1965, food of the Kuzedika Paiute of Mono Lake, Calif.), J. Davis
(1961, as a food involved in trade among tribes), Downs (1966, H. hians
as food of the Washo, who made long trips to collect them), Fowler (1986, as
food of Great Basin tribes), Irwin (1980, food of the Inyo County, California
Shoshoni), Kroeber (1925, food of the Koso or Panamint), Merriam (1979, food of
the Mono Paiute and Panamint Shoshone), Muir (1911, food of the Mono Paiute),
Powers (1877b, as food at Owens Lake), Steward (1933 as food at Owens Valley
and Mono Lake; 1941, food of the Nevada Shoshoni), Stewart (1941, food of the
Northern Paiute), and Strong (1969, food of the desert people).
Oestridae (warble flies, bot flies)
Hypoderma bovis Linn., larva
Oedemagena tarandi (Linn.), larva
Russell (1898: 228)
noted that some Indian tribes in the far north depend almost entirely on the
caribou for survival -- for food and for skins for lodges and clothing. Every part of the animal was utilized,
including the grubs in its back (considered to be Hypoderma lineatum de
Villers by Russell, but now known as H. bovis). The grubs were well-developed by the latter
part of April. Russell states, "The Indians did not remove them from
pieces of meat destined for the kettle," but cites an earlier report by
Hearne that, "They are always eaten raw and alive out of the skin and are
said by those who like them to be as fine as gooseberries." Children were
particularly fond of them. Felt (1918) cites R.M. Anderson (1918)
and says: "He states that the Eskimos pick out the grubs from the hides in
the spring and eat them like cherries and adds, apparently from experience,
that they are very watery and absolutely tasteless."
Harper
(1955: 52, 57) reported that “the larvae of the warble fly (Oedemagena
tarandi), found beneath the skin of the Caribou, are relished by the
Eskimos, being eaten apparently while alive and raw.” Harper cites a 1795 paper
by Hearne reporting the Indians as eating the warbles in his day.
Rhagionidae (snipe flies)
Atherix sp., egg masses with adult females
Aldrich
(1912b)
relates two Indian accounts of harvesting a species of Atherix, a fly
genus in which oviposition sites may become covered with a mass of both flies
and eggs to a depth of several inches.
In the first account, by a Modoc Indian, the flies were called Ha-lib-wah,
and they were gathered early in the summer in the following manner:
The Indians would place logs across
the river in about the same manner that a present-day log or lumber boom is
constructed. Then they would go up
stream and shake the flies off the willow bushes growing along the banks of the
river. The flies falling on the water
would float down stream and lodge against the logs in great quantities. As many as a hundred bushels could be
gathered in this way in a single day.
The Indians used a kind of basket to dip the flies from the water and
carry them to the place where they were to be prepared for food.
Aldrich describes in detail the method of preparing the
flies in a pit lined with hot stones.
The
account given to Aldrich by a Pit River Indian, also referring to Modoc County,
California, was somewhat different:
[The flies would gather] near the
head of a small canyon through which flowed a small stream of water. . . some
time in the month of May, and could be gathered by the tons. The trees, bushes
and rocks were covered with them in places to the depth of five or six
inches. Hence it was no trouble to
gather them, for they could be scraped off the rocks and trees into great
heaps. . . The time of gathering them was in the cool of the morning when they
were all settled and too cold to fly. In the heat of the day the air would be
so filled with them as to exclude the sun and one could see but a short
distance.
The food was called "Why-hauts" by the Pit
River Indians, and a great deal of it was used as part of the winter food
supply. Their method of preparation,
described by Aldrich, was somewhat different from that of the Modoc Indians.
Essig (1931) made
several trips to the Pit River in an attempt to collect specimens and determine
the identity of the Atherix species reported earlier as food by Aldrich,
but he was not successful. Extensive
power developments may have altered the habitat sufficiently that the insect is
no longer abundant. He did find along
the river, however, "the California salmon fly, Pteronarcys californica
Newport, a plecopteran that emerges in enormous numbers during the month of
May" and "fairly swarms on the bushes along the streams" in the
area. "The adults could be shaken
from the bushes and collected in bulk as they readily float on the
water." This insect is used
extensively for trout fishing in the region, but whether it might be the insect
collected earlier as food can not be known with certainty.
Tipulidae (crane flies)
Holorusia rubiginosa Loew, larva
Tipula derbyi Doane, larva
Tipula quaylii Doane, larva
Tipula simplex Doane, larva
Essig (1931)
reported that larvae of Holorusia rubiginosa, which occurs in freshwater
streams, and several Tipula species, T. simplex, T. derbyi
and T. quaylii, are abundant in the late winter and early spring in
California and formed a ready supply of food when most other foods are scarce.
Crane
fly remains comprised 25% of a human coprolite recovered from Bamert Cave in
east-central California (Nissen 1973: 66-68).
Miscellaneous Diptera
Waugh (1916: 139)
cites DuPerron (1638-1639) that the Hurons made a porridge of corn meal and
water to which they sometimes added a handful of small gnat-like
"waterflies"; this they esteemed highly and made "feasts of
them."
Hemiptera
Belostomatidae (giant water bugs)
Lethocerus americanus Leidy, adult
Essig (1949), in
addition to several species discussed in his earlier papers as food for the
western Indians, mentions that the common waterbug, Lethocerus americanus
(Leidy), was and is still eaten by man.
Homoptera
Aphididae (aphids)
Hyalopterus pruni (Geoffroy) (= H. arundinis
Fabr.), honeydew
The
sweet honeydew exudations of aphids and coccids were called "Indian
honey" by the early whites in California (Essig 1931). It was particularly abundant on willows along
streams and on and under shrubs in the arid regions. Although this crystallized excretion was
widely used in the Great Basin, Sutton (1988: 73-76) considered
it a minor resource. For many years, as
shown by the earlier accounts following, the insect source of the honeydew was
not known.
Palmer (1871: 423)
discussed a sweet substance produced by or on bent grass (Arundo phragmites):
This species of reed, which grows
abundantly around St. Thomas, in Southern Utah, during the summer months,
produces a kind of white, sweet gum. The
Utah Indians cut down the reeds and lay them in piles on blankets or hides, and
let them remain for a short time to wilt, when the bundles are beaten with rods
to release the gum. The small particles
so detached are pressed into balls, to be eaten at pleasure. It is a sweet, manna-like substance.
Powell (1881: 44)
mentions "honey-dew" in discussing Indian mythology:
The next day he met the elder
brother and accosted him thus: 'Brother,
your words were wise; let the U-in-ka-rets work for their food. But how shall they be furnished with
honey-dew? I have thought all night
about this, and when the dawn came into the sky I sat on the summit of the
mountain and did think, and now I will tell you how to give them
honey-dew: Let it fall like a great snow
upon the rocks, and the women shall go early in the morning and gather all they
may desire, and they shall be glad.'
'No,' replied the elder brother, 'it will not be good, my little
brother, for them to have much and find it without toil; for they will deem it
of no more value then dung, and what we give them for their pleasure will only
be wasted. In the night it shall fall in
small drops on the reeds, which they shall gather and beat with clubs, and then
will it taste very sweet, and having but little they will prize it the
more.' And the younger brother went away
sorrowing, but returned the next day and said:
'My brother, your words are wise; let the women gather the honey-dew
with much toil, by beating the reeds with flails.'
Orcutt (1887) was
informed by a local rancher in northern Lower California that the sweet
substance formerly used by the Indians (of which there were now few) was
gathered from a low shrub which proved to be Rhus ovata. As described by Orcutt, "This curious
substance when rolled together in the hand would form little balls of about the
same consistency as the whitest of bees' wax; upon tasting, it was found to be
as sweet and delicious in flavor as the best of refined sugar."
Witherspoon
(1889) described the honey dew harvest by the Nevada Indians as follows:
Early in the morning the squaws and
children cut the tules and brought them to the shore in armfuls. They were then
spread upon blankets, pieces of old canvas or calico, and exposed to the sun.
In time the small drops of ‘dew’ crystallized by evaporation. When in the
proper state the tules were beaten with willow wands from which the bark had
been removed. This beating detached the particles of dew which fell on the
cloth beneath from which it was removed with great care.
Witherspoon notes that the arduous labors of the Indians
for such slight returns was evidence of the high value they placed on this
product. He states that he was informed by white men living near Honey Lake
that the lake derived its name from the honey dew.
Bidwell (1890: 126;
also 1928: 52), a pioneer in the Humboldt Sink area in 1841 stated:
We saw many Indians on the Humboldt,
especially towards the sink. There were
many Tule marshes. The tule is a rush,
large, but here not very tall. It was
generally completely covered with honeydew, and this in turn was wholly covered
with a pediculous-looking [louse-like] insect which fed upon it. The Indians gathered quantities of the honey
and pressed it into balls about the size of one's fist, having the appearance
of wet bran. At first we greatly
relished this Indian food, but when we saw what it was made of -- that the
insects pressed into the mass were the main ingredient -- we lost our appetites
and bought no more of it.
Coville (1892:
355), in describing the customs and foods of the Panamint Indians of Inyo
County, California (part of the Shoshonean family), provides the following:
Phragmites vulgaris, the
common reed, furnishes what is known as 'sugar.' In the early summer, commonly in June, when
the plants have attained nearly their full size, they are cut and dried in the
sun. When perfectly brittle the whole
plant is ground and the finer portion separated by sifting. This moist, sticky flour is moulded by the
hands into a thick gum-like mass. It is
then set near a fire and roasted until it swells and browns slightly, and in
this taffy-like state it is eaten.
Bolton (1919, II:
56), in the account of Father Kino in California, Arizona and Sonora, mentions
honeydew:
In order that sugar, which with so
great artifice and toil is made over here, may not be lacking to the
Californians, heaven provides them with it in abundance in the months of April,
May, and June, in the dew which at that time falls upon the broad leaves, where
it hardens and coagulates. They gather
large quantities of it, and I have seen and eaten it. It is as sweet as sugar to the taste, and
differs only in the refraction, which makes it dark.
Humorous
to this writer is the following excerpt from Father Kino (pp. 58-60):
All this fertility and wealth God
placed in California only to be unappreciated by the natives, because they are
of a race who live satisfied with merely eating. . . by nature they are very
lively and alert, qualities which they show, among other ways, by ridiculing
any barbarism in their language, as they did with us when we were preaching to
them. When they have been domesticated
they come after preaching to correct any slip in the use of their
language. If one preaches to them any
mysteries contrary to their ancient errors, the sermon ended, they come to the
father, call him to account for what he has said to them, and argue and discuss
with him in favor of their error with considerable plausibility; but through
reason they submit with all docility.
Bolton (1927: 153,
219), from the diaries of missionary explorer Fray Juan Crespi in California,
makes brief reference to receiving as gifts from the Indians the sweet dew that
sticks to the reed grass.
Woodward (1934)
draws from an 1859 newspaper article the information that the Chumash Indians
of the Tulare country, who came once a year to the Mission Santa Barbara for
trading, included among their wares "panoche, or thick sugar, made from
what is now called honey dew, and the sweet carisa cane, and put up into small
oblong sacks made of grass and swamp flags."
Concerning
sources of sweets among the California Indians observed during expeditions in
1769 and 1770, Fages (1937: 79) writes: "The juice of the reed grass (carrizo)
is obtained, after it has been harvested in season, by exposure to the sun for
four or five days, when it can be shaken from the leaves, coagulated, and
dried, falling like the manna of the apothecary shops."
Woodward (1938)
reviewed earlier literature relative to the "honey" used by
California Indians and concludes that it "was not the product of bees, but
was rather the exudations of sucking insects gathered by the tribesmen and
formed into cakes or stored in woven bags for home consumption and trade."
Harrington
(1945)
cites correspondence with B.R. Stuart regarding honeydew:
The Southern Paiute also had another
secondary supply of sweets which I have never read anything about. In the spring this native cane, which grows
in the river valleys and near springs, is attacked by a small white species of
Aphis. This aphis brings the sap out of
the cane-stalk and it hardens or crystallizes in small gobs in the air. The Paiute used to scrape these off, aphis
and all -- the more aphis in the gob, the better.
During
correspondence with Stuart, Harrington received a sample of the sugar (which
was somewhat aged) and states that it looked like maple sugar and tasted
something like malted milk. From Stuart,
Harrington learned that the tribal elders used the term pa gymph for the
sugar (literal translation, "water weed") which they took from
carriso cane growing in wet or marshy spots in the Muddy River valley. As related by an elderly Paiute woman, the
cane was cut and the bundles spread out to dry in the sun for a day. Then, while held over a hide, the canes were
beaten with a short stick to dislodge the pa gymph, which was rolled
into balls about the size of a turkey egg.
Early May was usually the time for gathering the sugar. The balls were wrapped in cane leaves and
stored in a basket for later use as needed.
Heizer (1945)
provides a valuable review of the earlier literature on sugar gathering in the
western United States, noting that the methods of gathering were similar even
in widely separated localities. The
common method was to cut the plants, allow them to dry in the sun, then beat or
thresh them to shake off the tiny droplets which were then gathered and pressed
into balls or cakes. According to Heizer's personal notes: "The Humboldt Lake Paviotso cut the cane
off carefully at the base in order not to loosen the sugar grains. Cutting took place in September or October
before the first rains which would dissolve and wash off the honey-dew. The cane was laid on tule mats and
threshed. The sugar fell off and the
resultant product was wind-winnowed to remove the small stem and leaf
particles."
In
researching early Mission records in California on the use of honey-dew by the
Indians and its adoption by the Fathers, Jones (1945) cites Pere
Picola who wrote in 1702: "In the
months of April, May and June there falls with the dew a kind of manna, which
solidifies and hardens on the leaves of reeds from which it is collected. I have tasted some. It is a little less white than sugar, but has
all the sweetness of it." Jones
mentions that some of the Fathers considered this "manna" as a
special dispensation from Heaven and that explorers and missionaries of the
time talked of cakes of sweet paste.
Jones credits Woodward (1938) with showing that the manna was not from
the sky and not from bees.
Jones was the first to report the
specific identity of the insect, the aphid, Hyalopterus pruni (Geoffroy)
(= arundinis (Fabr.)). It is
called the mealy plum aphid because it spends its winter phase on plum trees
and other species of Prunus (Jones cites Davidson [1919] for details on
the life cycle of the aphid). In the spring
and early summer it migrates to summer hosts, primarily reed grass, Phragmites
(= Arundo) communis, from which it sucks sap and secretes the
honeydew on stems and leaves where it crystallizes. Jones says that the reed grass is a tall reed
or cane that grows along streams and in lake margins and other moist
situations, and it is probable that all of the references to the host plant of
the aphid producing the honeydew used by Indians, whether as "tule,"
"canes," "reeds," or "carrizo," actually refer to
this species.
Jones
summarizes the activity associated with honey-dew collection as follows:
The gathering of the honey-dew seems
to have been one of the annual seasonal rounds of activity of the Indians of
the Great Basin. A family or band might
camp for a short time near a stream or lake when the honey-dew was ready. Piecing together various accounts of the
manner of collection gives a picture about as follows: The collection seems to have been primarily
the work of women and children. The
reeds were cut and carried away from the water.
Stuart suggests that the mescal knife might have been used in the
cutting. Cutting was done just after
sunrise, and the reeds were spread out to dry during the warmer part of the day
to dry the honey-dew and make it brittle.
During the afternoon the reeds were held over a hide and beaten with a
stick to dislodge the deposits of honey-dew which fell on the hide and could be
collected. In recent times blankets and
pieces of canvas cloth have been substituted for hides. The honey-dew was rolled into balls, wrapped
in leaves, and stored in baskets until needed.
According
to Jones, the practice of honey-dew collecting centered among the Paiute and
was delimited roughly by the boundary of the Shoshonean area of the Great Basin
and southern California, although there are some records indicating the
practice extended up the California coast among the Chumash, Salinan, and
Costanoan Indians and also a short distance into the southern Yokuts area. There appear to be no records of its use by
the Pueblos or their neighbors or by tribes of the Gila-Salt drainage. Some of the Yavapai and Cocopa are said to
have used honey-dew from willows and other plants but not from reed grass. Jones notes that saccharine foods were rare
in North America outside the maple-sugar region, and thus, when found, were
eagerly exploited even at great labor.
Thus, the energy exerted in collection of the honey-dew "suggests
that the product was highly prized."
Bye (1972: 91)
notes, relative to the Southern Paiutes and the reed, possibly Phragmites
communis Trin., that the "brownish-sugary substance with various
inclusions possibly represents accumulation of honeydew [earlier investigators
are cited]...The sweet conglomeration was eaten whole and was mixed with water
to make a beverage."
See
also Bolton (1927, gifts of honeydew from southern California Indians, Chalfant
(1922, honeydew as food of the Eastern Monos and Panamints), Drucker (1937, as
food of southern California tribes), Fowler (1986, food of Great Basin tribes),
Gifford (1940, as food of Apache Pueblo groups in southwestern U.S.),
Harrington (1942, food of the Chumash and other groups along the central
California coast), Landberg (1965, food of the Chumash in southern California),
Steward (1933, food of the Owens Valley Paiute), and Voegelin (1938, food of
the Tubatulabal of California).
Cicadidae (cicadas)
Diceroprocta apache (author?), nymph and adult?
Magicicada (= Cicada and Tibicen septendecim
Linn. complex, nymphs. Other periodical
cicadas (Magicicada) in the complex include M. cassini Fisher, M.
septendecula Alexander & Moore, M. tredecim Walsh & Riley, M.
tredecassini A. & M., and M. tredecula A. & M.
Okanagana bella Davis, nymph and adult?
Okanagana cruentifera Uhler, nymph and adult?
Platypedia areolata Uhler, nymph and adult?
Although
there are numerous reports of the use of cicadas by groups in the Great Basin, Sutton
(1988: 53-55) notes that cicada consumption may be underrepresented in
the literature because of the confusion in terminology in which cicadas are
often called locusts. Although specific
species have not been identified in the ethnographic record, Sutton mentions
that species that are sometimes common in the Great Basin include the bloody
cicada (Okanagana cruentifera), the bella cicada (O. bella), the
orchard cicada (Platypedia areolata), and possibly P. lutea. The largest of these is O. cruentifera,
which measures about 32 mm in length.
After emerging from the ground and molting it takes about a day before
the adults are ready to fly. This is a
vulnerable stage for easy harvest.
Sutton concludes that cicadas were a minor resource because they didn't
occur each year and rarely occurred in large concentrations. Cicadas are among the few insect groups reportedly
used as food in the eastern part of the continent (e.g., see Collinson (1764),
Waugh (1916) and Carr (1951)).
Sandel (1715: 71;
vide Bodenheimer 1951: 285) reported on the cicada as a food of the
Indians. Collinson (1764),
in describing the emergence of the cicada in Pennsylvania, included among
general remarks that they are a repast of the Indians, who, after plucking off
the wings, boil and eat them.
Marlatt (1907:
102-104) quotes from correspondence to Dr. Asa Fitch from Mr. W.S. Robertson
that, "the Indians make the different species of Cicada an article of
diet, every year gathering quantities of them and preparing them for the table
by roasting in a hot oven, stirring them until they are well browned." Marlatt also notes that Mr. T.A. Kelcher who
sampled some of the cicada dishes described by Riley and Howard informed him
"that he found the cicadas fried in batter to be most palatable, and that
he much preferred them to oysters or shrimps." Marlatt concludes:
The use of the newly emerged and
succulent cicadas as an article of human diet has merely a theoretical
interest, because, if for no other reason, they occur too rarely to have any
real value. There is also the much
stronger objection in the instinctive repugnance which all insects seem to
inspire as an article of food to most civilized nations. Theoretically, the Cicada, collected at the
proper time and suitably dressed and served, should be a rather attractive
food. The larvae have lived solely on
vegetable matter of the cleanest and most wholesome sort, and supposedly,
therefore, would be much more palatable and suitable for food than the oyster,
with its scavenger habit of living in the muddy ooze of river bottoms, or many
other animals which are highly prized and which have not half so clean a record
as the periodical Cicada.
Marlatt conducted biological studies on Tibicen
septendecim (Linn.), having a 17-year cycle, and T. tredecim (Walsh
and Riley), with a 13-year cycle, but his discussion of cicadas as food does
not necessarily pertain only to those two species.
According
to Wyman and Bailey (1964: 42), cicadas were among
the few insects used as medicine among the Navaho and the only insects that
were ever used as food:
Most informants said that cicadas
were eaten only in 'the old days,' in their grandparents' time, perhaps when
food was scarce, but that children sometimes eat them now, that adults might
eat them because 'it is healthy' or 'for protection for being strong.' Usually the wings and the legs and sometimes
the head were removed and the body roasted in hot ashes. Other methods mentioned were to burn off the
wings and legs and salt the insects, to grind them with salt, to fry them, or
to eat them raw. The taste was likened
to peanuts, popcorn, or crackerjack; 'it has its own sugar.'
Wyman and Bailey (p. 43) provide the species identity of
several Cicadidae of the genera Beameria, Okanagana, and Tibicen
which were distinguished and named by the Navaho, but they do not indicate
which of the species were used as food.
Park
(cited in a 1986 presentation by C.S. Fowler; which is quoted here from Sutton
1988: 54) reported that the Northern Paiute at Pyramid Lake gathered
"Kta" which Fowler identified as a cicada, probably Okanagana
bella. They were gathered in the early
morning or evening, cooked in a small pit, and stored whole (minus the legs and
wings that had burned off) for winter use.
It was stated that the cooked cicadas tasted like "cooked
oysters" and would not spoil.
According
to Ebeling (1986: 368), cicadas, Diceroprocta apache, were
gathered in large quantities from saltbush by the Cahuilla, and were roasted
and eaten.
See
also Bean (1972, cicadas as food of the Cahuilla of southern California), Carr
(1951, as food of the Cherokee in N. Carolina), Chalfant (1922, food of the
Eastern Monos and the Panamints), Cowan (1865, food of North American Indians),
Cushing (1920, cicadas possibly a food of the Zuni), Fowler (1986, food of
Great Basin tribes),Lando and Modesto (1977, food of the Cahuilla), Malouf (1974,
food of the Gosiute), Merriam (1979, food of the Paviotso (Northern Paiute)),
Steward (1941, food of the Nevada Shoshoni; 1943, food of the Northern and
Gosiute Shoshoni of eastern Idaho and northern Utah), Stewart (1941, food of
Northern Paiute; 1942, food of the Ute-Southern Paiute) and Waugh (1916, as
food of the Iroquois).
Hymenoptera
Sutton (1988:
61-67) concluded that consumption of at least several genera of ants was
widespread in the Great Basin. Larvae,
pupae and adults were used; references to "ant eggs" most likely
refer to larvae and/or pupae. Ants were
easily stored and undoubtedly formed an important portion of the winter diet of
some groups. They also had medicinal and
ritual uses (which Sutton describes).
Bee and
yellowjacket larvae/pupae were fairly widely used in the Basin, but they appear
to have been a minor resource that was gathered incidental to other activities
(Sutton, pp. 69-72). Honey also was a
minor resource because the native species of bees do not produce appreciable
quantities.
Anthophoridae (digger bees)
See
Hrdlicka (1908, anthophorid honey a food of Tarahumare children.)
Apidae (honey bees, bumblebees)
Bombus appositus Cresson, larva/pupa
Bombus nevadensis Cresson, larva/pupa
Bombus terricola occidentalis Greene, larva/pupa
Bombus vosnesenskii Radoszkowski, larva/pupa
Essig (1931)
mentions that the larvae of wild bees were eaten raw by the Indians of
northwestern California. According to Palmer
(1871: 423), "The Winnebago and other tribes of the Indian Territory,
near the borders of Texas, gather large supplies of wild honey, which is very
abundant and much esteemed."
Muir (1911)
mentioned bumblebee larvae among the foods of the Digger Indians. Gifford (1940) mentions the use
of bumblebee and black-bee honey. Sutton
suggests several species of bumblebees that, on the basis of their abundance,
might have been eaten: the western
bumblebee, Bombus occidentalis, which is the most common species in the
western United States; the Nevada bumblebee, B. nevadensis; the mountain
bumblebee, B. appositus; and the yellow-faced bumblebee, B.
vosnesenskii, which are also common.
See
also Bean (1972, food of the Cahuilla), Downs (1966, food of the Washo in
California and Nevada), Fowler (1986, food of Great Basin tribes), Myers (1978,
food of the Cato in northwestern California), Olmsted and Stewart (1978, food
of the Achumawi in northeastern California), Steward (1933, food of the Owens
Valley Paiute) and Stewart (1980, food of the Western Shoshone in Nevada).
Cynipidae (gall wasps, etc.)
According
to Carr (1951), the Montauk Indians of Long Island considered the
oak gall produced by a cynipid wasp a food delicacy. The spongy inside fiber
was eaten under the name "sour jigs".
Essig (1931) mentions that the galls of the cynipid wasp, Disholcaspis
eldoradensis (Beutm.), which often occur abundantly on the stems of oak (Quercus
spp.), secrete quantities of honeydew, but it is not known whether the
Indians made use of it.
Formicidae (ants)
Camponotus sp., larva, adult
Formica rufa Linn., larva/pupa/adult?
Lasius niger Linn., larva/pupa/adult?
Myrmecocystus melliger Forel, honeypots
Myrmecocystus mexicanus hortideorum McCook, honeypots
Pogonomyrmex californicus Buckley,
larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex desertorum Wheeler, larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex occidentalis Cresson,
larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex owyheei Cole, larva/pupa/adult?
Pogonomyrmex sp., adult
James (1823: 195-196) provided an account of the use of
ants:
A singular description of food is
made use of by some tribes of Snake Indians, consisting chiefly, and sometimes
wholly of a species of ant, (formica, Lin.) [possibly Pogonomyrmex owyheei,
according to Sutton 1988] which is very abundant in the region in which they
roam. The squaws go in the cool of the morning
to the hillocks of these active insects, knowing that then they are together in
the greatest numbers. Uncovering the
little mounds to a certain depth, the squaws scoop them up in their hands, and
put them into a bag prepared for the purpose.
When a sufficient number are obtained, they repair to the water, and
cleanse the mass from all the dirt and small pieces of wood collected with
them. The ants are then placed upon a
flat stone, and by the pressure of a rolling-pin, are crushed together into a dense
mass, and rolled out like pastry. Of
this substance a soup is prepared, which is relished by the Indians, but is not
at all to the taste of white men.
In New
Brunswick, some Malechites indulged in crushed black ants found in dead trees,
and considered them a medicinally beneficial tidbit in the spring (Carr 1951).
Palmer (1871: 426-427) states that:
This tribe [Diggers of California
and the Plains] also feed upon ants, catching them by spreading a dampened skin
or fresh-peeled bark over their hills, which immediately attracts the
inhabitants to its surface. When filled,
the cover is carefully removed and the adhering insects shaken into a tight
sack, where they are confined until dead, and are then thoroughly sun-dried and
laid away. Bushels are thus gathered
annually, and are not more offensive than snakes, lizards, and crickets, which
the tribe also eat.
McCook (1882:
30-33) sampled the flavor of the honey from honey ants while conducting
biological studies on the species, Myrmecocystus melliger, in
Colorado: "It is very pleasant,
with a peculiar aromatic flavor, suggestive of bee-honey, and quite agreeable
to me. Dr. Loew describes it as having
'an agreeable taste, slightly acid in summer from a trace of formic acid, but
perfectly neutral in autumn and winter.'"
McCook discusses the uses and commercial potential of the ants as
follows:
The uses to which the Mexicans and
Indians put this ant-honey are various.
That they eat it freely, and regard it as a delicate morsel is beyond
doubt. Prof. Cope, when in New Mexico,
had the ants offered to him upon a dish as a dainty relish. The Mexicans (Loew) press the insects, and
use the gathered honey at their meals.
They are also said to prepare from it by fermentation an alcoholic
liquor. Again, they are said (Edwards)
to apply the honey to bruised and swollen limbs, ascribing to it great healing
properties. Dr. Loew's suggestion to bee-keepers to test the commercial value
of these ants as honey-producers is wholly impractical. The difficulties of farming the colonies,
gathering the supply, and the limited quantity of the product, would prevent a
profitable industry. The greatest number
of honey-bearers in a large colony, taking my observations as a standard, will
not exceed six hundred, which counting six grains of honey to the ant, would be
little more than one-half pound avoirdupois.
Besides, the sentiment against the use of honey thus taken from living
insects, which is worthy of all respect, would not be overcome. The Mexicans and Indians will therefore
probably not be disturbed in their monopoly of the honey-product of the nests
of Melliger.
McCook,
in weighing six average-sized honey-bearers, found an average body weight
(without honey) of 0.048 g and an average weight of honey per ant of 0.394 g,
thus the weight of the honey was 8.2 times the weight of the body. Thus, it would require nearly 12 hundred
(1,166) ants to yield a market or avoirdupois pound.
Wheeler (1908)
quotes (pp. 371-372) from an 1875 publication by Saunders of observations made
by a Mr. Krummeck on the biology of Myrmecocystus mexicanus var. horti-deorum
McCook in the mountains around Santa Fe:
He does not think that the honey is
deposited by these honey ants in cells, as has been stated, but that they keep
the fluid in their bodies, and the workers feed from them, and that when the
honey in the sac of an individual is exhausted, it dies. In reference to the uses made of this honey
in New Mexico, he says that the natives make a very pleasant drink of it, which
is made in the proportion of three or four drachms of the honey to six ounces
of water. It has not commercial value,
is not brought to market, but simply made for their own use. They use this drink among themselves in the
mountains in cases of fever, where medical attendance cannot be obtained. The honey is also used by them as a cure for
eye diseases, especially for cataract.
Muir (1911:
45-46) describes how the Digger Indians of California are fond of both the
larvae and adults of a large (about 3/4 inch long), jet-black, woodboring ant [Camponotus
sp.?]. "They bite off and
reject the head, and eat the tickly acid body with keen relish."
Egan (1917:
228-229) described how an Indian woman collected ants and ant "eggs"
from a large ant-hill:
. . . taking a large flat basket
arrangement, pushed the top of the hill to one side and then scooped up about a
peck of ants, gravel, dirt and all.
Taking it to one side she spread on the ground a piece of flour sack,
then taking the pan or basket in her hands, gave it an up and down motion at
the side opposite from her. You ought to
see those ants roll over the side and fall on the cloth! But not a bit of gravel or speck of dirt went
with them. I have often seen the Squaws
cleaning grass seed or wheat the same way, only the wheat or seed was left on
the pan, and the chaff and dirt went over the edge.
In two or three trips to the ant-hill she had collected
about a quart of ants and "eggs."
Essig
(1934) mentions the use of ant larvae in California for food rather than for
medicinal purposes.
Reagan (1934a: 54)
states that "In the Deep Creek
country there is a large red ant [possibly Pogonomyrmex occidentalis,
according to Sutton 1988, p. 64] that makes a large bushy mound for a
home. In the old times the Goshutes used
to go to these ant hills and collect the ants and the ant eggs [larvae?] in a
basket, take them home and boil them into a soup which the people assured the
writer was a delicious dish."
Reagan
(1934b: 60) reports that the Indians in Wintey River country (Utah) had
been known, when pressed with hunger, to gather up crickets and ants, dry them
in the sun, pound them and make bread of them.
Peter
Skeene Ogden (Rich and Johnson (1950: 133, 139) observed ants
being eaten by Northern Paiute in Idaho in February, 1826; the ants were
collected early in the morning before thawing. According to Ogden, ants were
preferred over locusts as food because they were fatter. In March, 1826, when 10 inches of snow
covered the ground, Ogden encountered Northern Paiute who had nothing in their
hut but a small stock of ants and a few wild prickly pears.
Euler (1966:
113), citing from Thomas Brown's unpublished journal, notes that Southern
Paiute were observed eating matted and boiled ants in the mid-1800s. Stewart (1966:53) cites the
earlier report by Father deSmet on the eating of ants and grasshoppers by the
Ute.
Burgett
and Young (1974) analyzed repletes of Myrmecocystus mexicanus and
M. mimicus collected in Arizona and found sugars in the following
proportions: fructose 47-49%, glucose 42-44%, and maltose 7-8%.
Blackburn
(1976-1977) presents evidence that the Kitanemuk of California ingested ants
(accompanied with fasting) to produce hallucinogenic or mind-altering
effects. Ants were apparently used
similarly in some neighboring Indian groups, and a number of potentially
mind-altering substances have been isolated from ant toxins.
Hall (1977)
reported recovery of body parts of ants (probably Formica sp.) from two
coprolite specimens from Zone One (p. 7, Table 1) at Dirty Shame Rockshelter,
dated to between 400 B.P. and 1100 B.P.
Conway
(1977) studied repletes of the honey ant Myrmecocystus mexicanus
hortideorum McCook dug from nests in Colorado and found that color varies
from clear to a very dark amber, with the latter forming about 96%. Analyses of crop fluid showed that the dark
nectar contained more dissolved solids (53.6%) with glucose (18.7%) and
fructose (11.9%) predominant among identifiable solids. Only a trace of sucrose was found. Clear repletes, on the other hand, contained
only 1.0% of solids with sucrose (0.58%) predominant. The nectar from both clear and dark repletes
was acidic, with a ph of 4.5 in the former and 3.6 in the latter. In weight, dark amber repletes averaged 0.19
g, while a single clear replete weighed only 0.07 g. Dark amber nectar has the taste, smell and
coloration of cane molasses, according to Conway, while clear replete syrup has
no detectable taste or smell.
Considering the arid environment in which these ants live, it is a
reasonable assumption that the clear repletes serve simply as water-storage
vessels.
Honey
ant repletes are modified workers with greatly distended abdomens that hang
from specially constructed domed chambers.
In the case of M. mexicanus, the "conventional" workers
forage for nectar on summer evenings, return to the colony and regurgitate it
to the repletes. Conway observed workers
collecting nectar from reddish-brown galls on scrub oaks (Quercus gambellii)
and from the surface of green yucca (Yucca glauca) capsules, and
occasionally sipping honeydew from aphis on yuccas. The ants also brought dead arthropods to the
nest. Conway found the first repletes in
chambers 17-51 cm below the surface, but more commonly between 20 and 35
cm. The number of replete chambers per
nest ranged from 7-21 and they were found at depths down to 1.8 m.
A
species of honey ant that was probably eaten although there are no reports of
it is Myrmecocystus mimicus. The
abdomens of the repletes are "the size of blueberries," and there may
be 2,000 repletes in a colony of 15,000 ants, according to Holldobler (1984;
vide Ebeling 1986: 28-30), who studied the species in Arizona.
Ebeling (1986:
28-30) gives a brief summary of the life history of Myrmecocystus and
amount of honey produced, and reports (p. 180) that the Atsugewi "ate the
eggs of a red ant they called sinosita" which they dug from the
anthills and shook into a basket.
Sutton (p. 61) speculates
that genera and species which, from ecological considerations, were probably of
importance as food in the Basin included the red harvester ants, Pogonomyrmex
occidentalis, P. owyheei, P. desertorum, and P.
californicus, the former two of which are much larger than the latter
two. Other ants endemic to the Basin
include the red ant, Formica rufa, carpenter ants, Camponotus
spp., and the American black ant, Lasius niger. The honey ant, Myrmecocystus mexicanus
hortideorum occurs throughout the Basin and may have been used as food.
The
newspaper, The Sunday Oregonion of June 27, 1993, reported that
Paiute-Shoshone tribal members were considering whether to let the government
store its radioactive nuclear waste on their reservation, creating badly needed
jobs and economic growth. The reservation
is in a remote area along the Oregon-Nevada border. Ernestine Coble, 46, tribal council
chairwoman, who was quoted at length, believes that the old values are slipping
away and she would like to save the ones that remain. For instance, her grandmother would say,
"Well, we're going to have ant pudding.
You'd better get ready. We're
going to have to leave when the sun comes up." Eight-year-old Ernestine's job was to put on
warm clothing and to carry an empty coffee can.
They would hike around the res (short for reservation). Her grandmother would spot a mound, lift the
top like an old straw hat, and scoop out balls of cold-numbed ants. They were put into the coffee can and cooked
on the old wood stove. Ernestine said
that the ant pudding was not her favorite food, but it was a tradition and an
anchor to a world of power and solidarity.
From the article it can be calculated that the older generation of
Paiutes in Oregon were still eating at least some of their insect foods as
recently as about 1955.
From
ethnographic accounts, it appears that adult ants consumed were primarily the
workers (e.g., Kelly 1932, Reagan 1934, Steward 1941, 1943, Stewart 1942,
Voegelin 1942). The author has seen no
accounts from North America suggesting that winged males and females were
harvested, which is the case with many of the ants harvested on other
continents.
See
also Bean (1972, ants as food of the Cahuilla of southern California), Bequaert
(1922, food of N. American Indian tribes), Davis (1965, food of the Kuzedika
Paiute), Downs (1966, food of the Washo of California and Nevada), Elliot
(1909, food of the "Snake Indians" in Utah), Fladung (1924, food of
Shoshones), Fowler (1986, food of Great Basin tribes), Frison (1971, Pogonomyrmex
charred fragments in late prehistoric Shoshonean lodges), Harris (1940, food of
the White Knife Shoshoni of Nevada), Heizer (1954, food of the Utah Utes),
Kelly (1932, food of the Surprise Valley Paiute; 1938, Northern Paiute tale of
ants), Lowie (1909a, food of northern Shoshone, 1924, food of the Lemhi
Shoshone), Malouf (1974, food of the Gosiute), Olmsted and Stewart (1978, food
of the Achumawi of northeastern California), Ray (1933, ants not eaten by the
Southeast Salish), Ross (1956, food of the Snake Indians), Shimkin (1947, food
of the Wind River Shoshone), Steward (1933, food of the Owens Valley Paiute;
1941, food of the Nevada Shoshoni; 1943, food of the Northern and Gosiute
Shoshoni), Stewart (1942, food of the Ute-Southern Paiute; 1980, food of the
Western Shoshone in Nevada), Strong (1969, food of the desert people), Voegelin
(1942, food of northeastern California Indians) and Waugh (1916, food of the
Iroquois).
Vespidae (paper wasps, yellowjackets, hornets)
Vespula diabolica Saussure, larva/pupa
Vespula pennsylvanica Saussure, larva/pupa
Vespula spp., larvae/pupae
According
to Daguin (1900: 14; vide Bodenheimer 1951: 292), wasp grubs and
pupae were eaten in South Carolina.
According
to Essig (1931), the larvae of yellow jackets, hornets and other wasps
were readily eaten raw by the Indians of northwestern California. To collect them, the nests were smoked to
subdue the adults.
To
obtain yellowjacket larvae, Garth (1953) reports, as summarized by
Ebeling (1986: 182), that:
The Atsugewi attached a white flower
to the leg of a dismembered grasshopper and used the leg as a bait. The flower helped them follow the flight of
any yellowjacket (Vespula) when it carried the bait away, thereby
locating its nest, which was in the ground.
The insects in the nest were killed by smoke from burning pine
needles. The nest, with its thousands of
larvae and pupae, was dug out and roasted over coals, first on one side and
then the other.
Sutton (p. 71) notes that
the most common yellowjacket in the Basin is Vespula pennsylvanica, with
V. diabolica also common.
See also
Barnett (1937, vespids as food of Indians on the Oregon coast), Beals (1933,
food of the Nisenan), Callaghan (1978, food of the Lake Miwok in California),
Carr (1951, food of the Cherokee in N. Carolina), Dixon (1905, food of the
Northern Maidu in the southern Sierra region), Driver (1937, food in the
southern Sierra Nevada; 1939, food of the Wiyot in northwestern California),
Drucker (1937, food of southern California tribes; 1941, food of Yuman-Piman
groups), Essene (1942, food of Round Valley, California groups), Fowler (1986,
food of Great Basin tribes), Gifford (1940, food of the Apache-Pueblo), Gifford
and Kroeber (1937, food of the Pomo in California), Harrington (1942, food of
the Chumash), Heizer (1954, food of the Utah Utes), Landberg (1965, food of the
Chumash), Levy (1978a, food of the Eastern Miwok; 1978b, food of the Coastanoan
in California), Muir (1911, food of Digger Indians), Myers (1978, food of the
Cahto in northwestern California), Olmsted and Stewart (1978, food of the
Achumawi), Powers (1877a, food of the Yokuts of California), Riddell (1978,
food of the Maidu and Konkow), Steward (1933, food of the Owens Valley Paiute;
1941, food of Nevada Shoshoni; 1943, food of Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni),
Stewart (1942, food of the Ute-Southern Paiute) and Voegelin (1942, food of
northeast California Indians).
Isoptera
Rhinotermitidae (subterranean termites)
Reticulitermes tibialis Banks
A
coprolite from Zone III and one from Zone IV of Dirty Shame Rockshelter in
southeast Oregon yielded parts of termites, possibly Reticulitermes
tibialis; the termites made up 78.3% of the coprolite from Zone IV (Hall
1977; 7).
Miscellaneous termites
Essig
(1934) mentions the use of termites from decaying wood in California.
Lepidoptera
The use
of caterpillars as food has been widely reported throughout the great Basin,
with the specific identity best established for two species of moths, the
pandora moth, Coloradia pandora (Family Saturniidae), and the
white-lined sphinx, Hyles lineata (Family Sphingidae). The food use of the pandora moth is
well-documented in California and much is known about its ecology. Populations
in Arizona have been estimated as high as 100,000 per hectare. The caterpillars were known as piagi, Pe-ag'-gah
(big fat ones, good to eat), and similar spellings, depending on the tribe, and
they were widely traded. Several
investigators have concluded that the pandora moth provided a significantly
greater return for effort expended than did plant resources.
Arctiidae (tiger moths, etc.)
Arctia caja americana Harris, larva
See Powers
(1877a). Powers reported two species
of "Arctia," but according to Arnett (1985: 605), A. caja
americana is the only North American representative of the genus.
Lasiocampidae (tent caterpillars)
Malacosoma spp., larvae
According
to Essig (1949), the hairy tent caterpillars of North America,
especially California, which were abundant in the spring, "were singed to
remove the hairs and roasted before the fire by the Indians." These caterpillars belong to the genus Malacosoma.
Megathymidae (giant skippers)
Megathymus yuccae Boisduval & Leconte, larva
According
to Ebeling (1986: 364-365), the fat larvae of giant skipper
butterflies, which develop in agave and yucca and are up to 2 inches long, were
often roasted and eaten as a delicacy.
The best known California species is Agathymus stephensi which
burrows in leaves of Agave deserti and pupates in a chamber near the
base of the leaf, after constructing a "trap door" through which the
adult can later escape. Throughout the
Southwest, giant skipper larvae were roasted and eaten by the Indians, and
Ebeling notes that one of the wide-ranging species in mountains and deserts is
the Navajo giant skipper, Megathymus yuccae navaho. Ebeling cites one use of agave which, though
not relevant to food, shows the intimate knowledge and ingenuity with which the
Indians made use of their resources:
"At the end of each agave leaf was a hard, needlelike thorn. If it was carefully detached, it came out of
the leaf with several feet of fiber attached to it. This made a natural needle and thread. Set into wooden handles with asphaltum, the
thorn could be used as an awl to facilitate basket making."
Noctuidae (noctuids)
Heliothis zea Boddie, larva
Homoncocnemis fortis Grote, larva
Spodoptera frugiperda Smith, larva
Barrett
(1936) describes an "army worm" used as food by the Pomo of
California. It's about 2 1/2 inches
long, almost hairless, feeds exclusively on ash, and appears in vast numbers
once every several years. The Indians
harvest the caterpillars by digging an ingenious and intricate system of pits
and trenches, the top edges of which they line with sand. The sand both helps to cause the caterpillars
to tumble in and then prevents them from crawling back out. According to Barrett, "It was really a
red-letter day in any Pomo community when this little caterpillar made his
appearance, and the Indians made this the occasion not only for an immediate
feast but they stored for winter use as large quantities as possible of the
dried caterpillars." The
caterpillars are killed by placing them in a vessel of cold water, where they
quickly drown. They are then roasted in
hot ashes or are boiled and are devoured on the spot or spread out to dry in
the sun for winter use. The male
caterpillars are called li'baiya, the females li'mata. Several hundred pounds could be gathered in a
day. The Northern Pomo apparently
collected this same species with great ceremony and solemnity, but that was not
the case with the central Pomo studied by Barrett.
Swezey (1978)
deduces that the armyworm reported earlier by Barrett (1936) was probably the
noctuid, Homoncocnemis fortis (Grote).
Swezey states, based on earlier accounts, that this species causes
outbreaks with attendent defoliation of ash trees (Fraxinus latifolia)
every 6-10 years. The Indians relished
these almost hairless larvae which they dried and roasted. One Indian woman was quoted: "And when they were good and dry, I used
to grab them and eat them. Gee, that was
good."
Ebeling (1986: 26) includes the larvae of the corn earworm, Heliothis
zea, and the fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda, among the insects
used as food by Indians of the arid areas of the West.
Saturniidae (giant silk moths)
Coloradia pandora Blake, larva, pupa
Hyalophora (= Platysamia; = Samia) euryalus
Boisduval, larva (See Essig 1958, Arnett 1985)
Aldrich (1912a) was
the first to call attention to the larva of Coloradia pandora as a food
of the Paiute Indians of California (although the species had not been
taxonomically described at that time).
Aldrich spent several days at Mono Lake, California, and the following
is extracted from his account:
While I was at the Mono Lake
post-office awaiting the departure of my stage, the postmaster, Mr. John
Mattley, an old Swiss pioneer of the basin who had taken a very intelligent
interest in my work, asked me, 'Have you seen the worms the Indians eat?' I
replied that I had not, but very much wished to do so. . . . He had two Indian
women working in his hay-field, both of them at the time standing about in the
road by the residence. 'Come with me,'
he exclaimed, and approached one of the women, asking her the question, 'Have
you got any of those worms on hand?' The woman grinned rather sheepishly, as if
expecting the subject to be a matter of ridicule, and said, 'No, all
gone.' 'But you had a lot yesterday,'
persisted Mr. Mattley. 'All gone,' was
all she would reply, so Mr. Mattley took me along to the other woman. She began with the same reply, but finally
admitted that there were some of the cooked ones still on hand. 'Show them to us,' demanded Mr. Mattley, and
she led us to her camp near by, where she laid back an old cloth and disclosed
a much-smoked three-quart tin bucket, nearly full of a yellowish,
greasy-looking stew. Considerably excited by the prospect, I picked up a little
stick and began to fish in the stew. It
was half full of large caterpillars, blackened by drying, resembling dried and
stewed prunes as much as anything. One of them I pulled in two and thrust a
half in my mouth to see what sort of food it was. I found it tough and flavorless, with an
insipidity beyond expectation on account of the absence of salt in the stew. .
. .
Aldrich
was informed to the effect, regarding harvest, that:
The caterpillars feed on the leaves
of the yellow pine (Pinus ponderosa), but not on the one-leafed pinon (Pinus
monophylla) which is much more abundant about Mono Lake. The Indians
collect the caterpillars by making a smudge under the tree, for which purpose
they make a trench rather close about the base of the tree; this is presumably
to guard against the spread of the fire.
As the thick smoke rises and envelopes the caterpillars, it causes them
to let go and drop to the ground, where they are collected by the Indians,
killed and dried. The preserved material
is called Papaia.
A Forest Service official in the San Francisco office
later informed Aldrich that, while inspecting a national forest at some
distance southeast of Mono Lake, he had observed a considerable area of
hillside in which every pine was surrounded by a trench in which there had been
a fire. From these observations, Aldrich
concluded that "the collection of this caterpillar for food is an industry
of considerable importance in the territory along the Nevada-California
line."
Aldrich (1921)
identifies the food called Pe-aggie by the Indians around Mono Lake,
California, as the caterpillar of Coloradia pandora Blake. The caterpillars are regarded as a great
delicacy by the Indians, and Aldrich reports (pers. comm. from G.S. Way) that
one multifamily group put up 1.5 tons of cured caterpillars during the summer
of 1920. Collection and preservation is
described as follows:
The first step in the collection of
the caterpillars is to make a trench about the base of each tree, the outer
edge of the trench as nearly vertical as possible. This is to keep the caterpillars from
straying away when they come down the tree.
The Indians go from tree to tree in the collecting season and pick them
up out of these trenches. The next
process is to kill and dry them. A large
mound of dry earth is made and a fire built about it. When it is thoroughly heated, the fire is
removed, the mound opened, the caterpillars thrown in and mixed with the hot
dirt. Here they remain an hour, until
partly cooked and dried. The Indians
then sift them out of the mixture with a specially made, cone-shaped sieve, so
that the insects are free from dirt. The
drying is finished by spreading them on the ground in bark huts for two days,
after which they are sacked and keep indefinitely in a cool, dry place.
The
life cycle of C. pandora requires two years, according to Aldrich, so pe-aggie
can be collected only every other year.
The foodplant is Pinus jeffreyi.
The eggs are laid in sheltered places in the bark in the latter part of
April. The larvae overwinter as
"balls" of caterpillars among the pine needles in the tops of the
trees. In the following summer, feeding
is completed by late June; the larvae descend the tree trunks, and, if they
escape the Indians, pupate in the soil.
In
describing serious injury to the yellow pine forests of eastern Oregon by the
larvae of Coloradia pandora, Engelhardt (1924) mentions
reports that "parties of Indians [Klamath] were assembling in parts of the
infested regions for the purpose of harvesting the living pupae which is done
by women and children armed with hoes and rakes." He continues:
"After gathering the pupae by bushels they are roasted and
pulverized and in that shape represent a welcome addition to the menu of Indian
food."
Engelhardt
reports that the lumberjacks were well-acquainted with the "pine-tree
worms," and "they related that during the feeding period in June and
early July the constant dropping of excrement made a noise like a sleet storm
and that a few weeks previous the tree trunks were literally alive with the
worms descending to enter the ground."
Ordinarily, the caterpillars are fairly common only every other year,
while large outbreaks occur at about 20-year intervals. Engelhardt continues:
Being too late to search for larvae,
we began to look for pupae in the ground below the trees and soon discovered
that these could be found easily and in untold numbers by simply combing with
one's fingers the loose, volcanic ash of which the soil was composed just below
the cover of pine needle mould. A scoop
of the hand was likely to produce 3 or 4 and in a short time we had an ample
supply. About 50 percent of the pupae
had been killed by parasites and bacterial diseases. A large mortality among the fully-grown
larvae was also indicated by the windrows of shrivelled-up specimens around the
base of trees. Chipmunks and other small
rodents and insectivores also no doubt account for a large amount of the pupae,
for their shallow excavations could be observed everywhere under the trees.
Engelhardt
describes a life cycle that is somewhat at variance with that described by
Aldrich:
The moths are not due to emerge
until August or early September of the next year following pupation; the eggs
are laid in masses, usually encircling twigs; the young larvae, hatching in
September, construct a slight webb, one for each colony, from which they issue
to feed but return daily and remain in it for hibernation when frost sets in;
this communal life is continued in the spring until the larvae are about
half-grown, when they scatter and become vagabonds; pupation takes place in
late June and during July.
Miller and Hutchinson (1928:
158-160), described harvest and processing of pandora caterpillars by the Monos
and Paiutes, relying mainly (as did Aldrich earlier) on first-hand observations
made by Forest Ranger G.S Way of the Inyo National Forest, California. The
authors state: "The Indians use them in stews, mixing them with potatoes
[a late introduction, as noted by Sutton] well seasoned with salt and pepper
[also a late addition], and serving them with bread made from pine nuts [Pinus
spp.] and sunflower [Helianthus sp.] seed." Note is made by the authors that, although
the practice has almost disappeared, it is the pandora pupae, not the larvae,
that are harvested by the Klamath and Modoc in southern Oregon. The pupae are known as
"bull-quanch."
Keen (1929: 78)
describes the use of C. pandora as follows:
The Pai-Ute Indians of the Mono Lake
region encircle the infested trees with a trench in which the caterpillars are
caught when they descend from the trees.
The caterpillars are then collected by the Indians, dried and ground
into a paste which is called Pe-aggie and is used as food. The pupae are egg shaped, over an inch in
length and of a dark red color; they are called "Bull Quanch" by the
Klamath Indians, who dig them out of the ground and relish them as food. During years of bountiful harvest, the young
Indians often become ill from a too hearty indulgence in the rich diet. Fortunately for the Indians and for the pine
trees as well, the heavy epidemics only occur at intervals of about thirty
years.
Spier (1930: 160,
227) states that insects are probably not a regular item of diet among the
Klamath, but that Gatschet records that women gather moth chrysalids [probably C.
pandora] in late August and September.
The ground is scraped up with a paddle to gather the chrysalids and they
are pit-roasted between layers of grass, with a covering of bits of bark and
earth.
Essig (1931)
states that many caterpillars were used as food by the California Indians, but
those of Coloradia pandora were the most extensively used. The moth occurs throughout the yellow and Jeffrey
pine belts of the West. Essig confirms
the two-year life-cycle reported by earlier writers. Eggs are laid in clusters on the bark in May,
June and July, and the young caterpillars appear in August, feeding on the
needles and often defoliating large areas of standing timber. They do not attain full growth until the
following June or July when they crawl or drop to the ground to pupate in the
soil. The adult moths emerge the
following spring. Harvest methods
described by Essig are similar to those described earlier, and Essig mentions
that the reservation Indians are still using this food.
Gifford
(1932:
22-23) notes that the acorns used by the Northfork Mono were more than 50%
wormy, but the wormy meats were not thrown out.
Earlier workers are cited relative to chrysalids (piagi) of the pandora
moth (Coloradia pandora) being eaten, after parching with coals in a
winnowing basket. Gifford states that
the Eastern Mono are reported to eat the caterpillars, while the Klamath Lake
Indians and Western Mono eat the chrysalids.
Regarding
the taste of pe-ag-gie, the stew made from larvae of C. pandora, Essig
(1934) says that hungry whites who tasted the food claimed that
boarding with the early Californians on the "American plan was not so
good."
Emma
Davis
(1964: 261; vide Sutton 1988: 38-39) suggested that small structures for
drying and storage were used to dry roasted piagi (pandora moth larvae),
although this interpretation has been questioned (see Weaver and Basgall 1986:
169).
Carolin
and
Knopf (1968) mention that, in collecting pandora moth larvae (the
Paiute tribe) and pupae (the Modoc and Klamath), the Indians must have effected
some direct control of this damaging pest in localized areas. The Paiute smoked the larvae out of trees
with smudge fires and caught them in trenches.
They were dried and cooked with vegetables in a stew called
"peage". The pupae were called
"bull quanch" and considered a delicacy.
Furniss and Carolin
(1977: 195), in discussing the biology and outbreaks of the pandora moth,
note its sporadic abundance limits its use as a food staple.
Bettinger (1982: 55)
discusses the nature of archaeological evidence of pandora moth harvesting
sites. Bettinger (1985:
43) states that insects were a useful supplementary source of food for the
Owens Valley Paiute and illustrated a loosely twined basket for caterpillar
collecting.
In
June, 1981, at Bishop, California, Fowler and Walter (1985)
observed elderly Paiute harvesting and processing pandora moth larvae, Coloradia
pandora lindseyi, or piagi. The larvae were harvested by hand that
season rather than by the frequently described trenching method. The authors accompany their report with a
series of excellent photographs. Their
description of the two-year life cycle is similar to the summary by Blake and
Wagner (1987) (see below). Their
description of harvesting and processing is the most detailed available and is
quoted nearly in full below:
Caterpillars are ordinarily
collected in trenches (odiabi) dug around the bases of trees selected
for their accumulations of caterpillar frass (Fig. 2). According to the elders, old trenches were
cleaned and new ones dug when the people first arrived at the harvesting
grounds. Old trenches take a person
roughly ten minutes to clean, 'if you get right at it.' The trenches were approximately one-third
meter deep and roughly one-third to one-half meter from the tree, and totally
encircled it. Cleaning takes the trenches
to the level of the old soil or just below.
All litter such as pine needles and twigs...was removed. The elders noted that trenches had either
vertical or back-cut walls to prevent the caterpillars from climbing out.
New trenches were made in the same
manner [as the old]. In former times a
wooden digging stick (woobi) was used for excavating the trenches. . .
The only social restriction placed on excavation of new trenches was that they
must be located in one's own family area.
Trenches were private property, usually inherited through the female
line.
None of the Owens Valley elders felt
that building fires around the bases of trees, as reported by [earlier
investigators] to smoke the caterpillars would necessarily bring them down
faster. 'They come down on their own,'
the elders said, and indeed in June, 1981, they were observed descending the
trees in large numbers.
Trenches were cleaned of
caterpillars twice daily and processing took place coincidently. During the 1981 harvest, caterpillars were
merely gathered from the ground at a rate of roughly 100 per 30 minutes (Fig.
3). In the past, the caterpillars were kept in the shade in open-twined
globular baskets (Fig. 4) or in a 'large pit'. . . while awaiting
processing. Today, plastic buckets serve
as well, as the caterpillars are prevented from climbing out by the slick
sides.
Processing begins in a sandy area
with the construction of a roasting pit about one meter in diameter. In the past, larger pits may have been used
depending on the catch. A conical mound
of sand is first made and then hollowed in the center. A fire is built to heat the surrounding
sand. The coals are removed and the live
caterpillars are then placed in the hollowed center of the pit (Fig. 5). They are mixed with the hot sand at the
bottom of the pit, covered, and left to roast for 30 minutes to one hour,
depending on what additional processing is planned.
After roasting, the caterpillars are
removed from the pit and sifted to remove the sand. An open-twined parching basket (paco)
was formerly used, now replaced by the ingenious device of willow, reinforcing
rod, and hardware cloth. . . (Fig. 6).
The roasted caterpillars are then washed and sorted. Any 'flat' (possibly diseased), overcooked,
or discolored caterpillars are discarded, in favor of nice, plump, yellow ones
(Fig. 7). Piagi to be eaten
immediately are boiled for roughly one hour in either salted or unsalted water,
depending on individual taste. Boiled
caterpillars are taken from the water and their heads removed. The results are enjoyed by all (Fig. 8). Caterpillars are eaten plain or made into a
stew with other meat and/or vegetable products.
The skins of the caterpillars are rather tough and they retain their
shape when cooked.
Caterpillars to be dried for storage
are placed in the shade for two or three days to two weeks. In former times, pole-and-bark drying sheds
were used, at least in some areas.
According to the elders, if the caterpillars are sun-dried they will
rapidly become rancid. In the opinion of
one individual, caterpillars boiled in salted water also would taste 'old' by
sometimes being cached at the harvesting grounds in the pole-and-bark sheds or
in pits. They kept well through the
winter, and with care into the spring and early summer.
The
authors conducted a proximate analysis of prepared piuga (roasted,
washed, boiled with non-iodized salt):
moisture 71.8%, protein 11.8%, fat 10.9%, ash 1.1%, and carbohydrates
4.3%. Calories/100 grams was estimated
at 163, and cal/hour worked at 1,848 - 2,753.
The authors consider the estimates of cal/hour returned for collecting
and processing to be probably low, but still nearly twice those of pinyon nuts
and considerably above values reported for most plant foods studied by Simms
(1984).
Data by
Schmid (1984) indicate the great abundance of the C. pandora
food resource. Schmid studied the
emergence and post-emergence behavior of the moth in Arizona, and estimated
that more than 100,000 adults emerged per infected hectare in 8,000 hectares
that had been moderately to severely defoliated by the preceding generation of
larvae. Miller and Wagner (1984)
reported that pandora moth larvae pupate beyond the dripline of the tree, where
the litter or duff layer is thinner. The
investigators speculate that pupation under open canopies where fuel loads are
light may be an adaptation that permitted higher survival during the frequent
low-intensity fires that were typical of the presettlement ponderosa pine
forest.
Ebeling (1986:
155-157) identifies several insects used or probably used by Indians. He notes that large outbreaks of pandora
moths occur only in areas of loose mineral soils, and gives a tip on how to
find pupae: "Likely areas for
digging for Pandora moth pupae are where one sees little tufts of pine needles
at the ends of otherwise defoliated twigs high in the larger trees. The larvae devour the needles and presumably
the tufts are growth that develops subsequent to their departure."
Noting
that many accounts of pandora caterpillar collecting and processing were not
based on firsthand observation and that misleading and often conflicting
information has accumulated, Weaver and Basgall (1986)
present a critical evaluation of discrepancies relating to collection trenches,
roasting hearths, storage structures, and smudge fires. Relative to the latter, the authors point out
that none of the first-hand accounts mentioned the use of smudge fires;
furthermore, modern collectors consistently express the opinion that smoke
would be of no help in bringing the caterpillars down. The authors conclude that systematic use of
smudge fires was unlikely.
Weaver
and Basgall also assessed the importance of pandora caterpillars relative to
regional subsistence strategies. It is
apparent that both the Mono Lake and Owens Valley Paiute regarded piagi
as a highly prized foodstuff. Based on
the fact that piagi has been shown to be fully competitive with
virtually all vegetal resources from the standpoint of energy (compare the data
of Fowler and Walter [1985] with those of Simms [1984]), piagi were more
predictable in terms of availability than originally thought (see discussion by
the authors), timing of caterpillar availability did not conflict with
scheduling of other important subsistence resources, they were storable and
collection territories were owned by particular family groups, the authors
conclude that piagi meet the criteria of a significant dietary
component. Finally, the authors discuss
temporal dimensions of piagi use and conclude that caterpillar
exploitation has considerable antiquity.
Blake
and
Wagner (1987) state that, "There are modern Indian people in
the United States, living within walking distance of major grocery and
fast-food chains, who choose to collect and eat larvae of the pandora moth, Coloradia
pandora lindseyi Barnes & Benjamin." Piuga is the Paiute name for the
larvae. The moth has a two-year life
cycle in east-central California, summarized as follows by Blake and Wagner:
Adults emerge from late July to
early August, mate, and the females lay their pale blue eggs indiscriminately
on bark surfaces, needles, and undergrowth.
Tiny first instars emerge from the eggs in late August and immediately
crawl to the tips of the branches and begin to feed in colonies. They overwinter at the base of the needles,
feeding only on warm days. Larvae resume
full-time feeding on the needles of their hosts in the spring when temperatures
are consistently warmer. The larvae grow
rapidly and consume an enormous quantity of needles (Carolin and Knopf 1968) of
all ages and can defoliate their hosts completely during an outbreak. Mature larvae are ca. 5.5 - 6 cm in length
and as big around as an adult's finger.
Blake
and Wagner cite recent research in saying:
"Pandora moth larvae pupate in the loose mineral soil beyond the
dripline of the tree...though pupae are sometimes found beneath the litter or
duff layer near the base of the tree. . . . Larvae crawl down the trees in late
June to early July and seek pupation sites.
Pupae remain in the soil until the following July, when adults emerge
and begin the cycle anew."
Piuga is regarded by the
Paiute Indians "as a tasty, nutritious food that is especially good for
sick people, much like our chicken soup," according to Blake and Wagner,
and many Paiutes said they "would eat piuga every day if it were
available." The authors also
describe collecting and processing, drawing largely, however, from Fowler and
Walter and Weaver and Basgall (see above).
Peigler (1994)
doubts that pupae of Hyalophora euryalus were eaten, at least routinely
(as reported earlier by Essig) "because of the power most groups
associated with the rattle made from these cocoons."
See
also Chalfant (1922, food of the Eastern Monos and the Panamint), E. Davis
(1963, 1965, food of the Kuzedika Paiute), J. Davis (1961, Eastern Mono trade
in C. pandora), Fowler (1986, food of Great Basin tribes), Johnston
(1995, harvest and preparation of "peaggies"), Merriam (1979), Muir
(1911), Steward (1933, 1941), Stewart (1941), Strong (1969, food of the desert
people) and Zigmond (1986, food of the Kawaiisu). For Hyalophora euryalus
see Powers (1877a).
Sphingidae (sphinx or hawk moths)
Hyles lineata Fabr., larva
Manduca sexta Johannsen (= Macrosila carolina (author?)),
larva
Among
the Pimos Indians, tobacco worms, which are the caterpillars of Macrosila
carolina, are gathered and made into soup, or fried until crisp and brown (Palmer
1871: 426-427). Vegetables, meal, or
seeds are usually added if made into pottage. Palmer says that he has seen this
tribe gather bushels of the worms for immediate consumption, or to be dried and
pounded up for winter stores.
Wright (1884: 238;
vide Sutton 1988: 39) observed
"vast armies of caterpillars. . . huge worms three and four inches
long," which according to Feninga and Fisher (1978) were the white-lined
sphinx moth, Hyles lineata.
Wright describes their use as follows:
[A] small army of Indians [men,
women, and children] are out gathering them as though they were huckleberries,
for use as food. Seizing a fat worm,
they pull off its head, and by a dexterous jerk the viscera are ejected, and
the wriggling carcass is put into a small basket or bag, or strung in strings
upon the arm or about the neck, till occasion is found to put them into a large
receptacle. At night, these Indians
carry their prey home, where they have a great feast. Indians from a long distance came to these
worm feasts, and it is a time of great rejoicing among them. The larvae that are not consumed at the time
(and they eat incredible quantities), are put upon ground previously heated by
a fire, and thoroughly dried, when they are packed away whole, or pulverized
into a meal.
Simmonds
(1885:
355-356, 360-366, 370) discusses a number of insects used as food by North
American Indians, for only some of which he cites sources of information. The only insect use mentioned by Simmonds
that is not referred to under the appropriate authors in this chapter is the
use of what he called "tobacco worms," Macrosila carolina, by
the Pimos Indians. According to Simmonds
(p. 355), the caterpillars "are gathered and made into soup, or fried
until crisp and brown. Vegetables, meal,
or seeds are usually added to the composition when made into pottage. A writer in the official agricultural reports
of the United States records having seen this tribe gather bushels of the worms
for immediate consumption, or to be dried and pounded for winter use."
Russell (1908: 81)
states that the Pima (southern Arizona) gather large quantities of a
"worm" called ma'kum.
After removing the head and intestines, the worms are put into cooking
pots lined with saltbush branches and boiled.
The skins are braided together while soft, and allowed to dry for a day
or two in the sun. These dry, brittle
"sticks" can then be eaten at any time without further
preparation. Pima women claim that their
hands become swollen and sore if they come into contact with the skin of the
worms.
Spier (1933: 65,
73) mentions honey and caterpillars among the foods of the Maricopa, one of the
Yuman tribes of the Gila River. The
following is excerpted from page 73:
A worm, called 'ame' (more probably
a caterpillar, since it was said to have a horn on each end) was caught,
boiled, dried, and eaten. They caught
them in their hands in the spring and late autumn. There was a peculiar way of catching
them: with one hand they caught the
beast, broke off the end with the thumb nail, squeezed it out, and inserted it
between the other fingers of the same hand.
In some fashion they braided long strings of these, perhaps because the
'worm' coiled around its fellows. Then
they boiled and dried them. They were
eaten dried or boiled. Dried 'worms'
were also heated in warm water and fried.
The finger tips got sore gathering them.
Spier mentions that the caterpillars are said to travel
rapidly. He considered this to be the
same as the Pima ma'kum.
Feninga and Fisher
(1978), by analyzing earlier reports, confirm the identity of one of the
insects used by the Cahuilla as the caterpillar of the white-lined sphinx moth,
Hyles lineata. These authors
state that, “In researching this subject, it has become apparent to us that the
relatively uncharted field of ethnoentomology has considerable potential for
adding to existing knowledge of California Indian life.”
See
also Fowler (1986, food of Great Basin tribes), Kelly (1964, food of the
southern Paiute), Lando and Modesto (1977, H. lineata), Powers (1877a,
food of California Indians).
Miscellaneous Lepidoptera
Childs (1953: 35)
mentioned that in living with and around the Sand Papago (along the U.S. --
Mexican boundary toward the Gulf of Mexico) and eating what they had to give,
there were two kinds of grubs which he "could not go." He describes only one: "One is those large army worms with a
large horn on their hind end. They get
very fat just before they bury up to become a butterfly. They roast them between two ollas, and cover
them with hot coals. They have a
beautiful smell as they are very fat when eaten, and there is considerable oil
that comes out of them. But to swallow
one I could not. . . ."
For
miscellaneous "caterpillars," see also Aginsky (1943, food of Central
Sierra Indians), Barnett (1937, food of Indians along the Oregon coast), Bean
and Theodoratus (1978, food of Western and Northeastern Pomo), Downs (1966,
food of the Washo), Driver (1937, food in the southern Sierra Nevada; 1939,
food in northwestern California), Drucker (1937, food of southern California
tribes; 1941, food of the Yuman-Piman), Essene (1942, food of Round Valley,
California groups), Fladung (1924, as food of Pai-Ute Indians), Fowler (1986,
food of Great Basin tribes), Gifford (1940, food of the Apache Pueblo groups),
Gifford and Kroeber (1937, food of the Pomo), Harrington (1942, food of groups
along the central California coast), Kelly (1932, food of the Surprise Valley
Paiute; 1964, food of Southern Paiute), Landberg (1965, food of the Chumash),
Levy (1978b, food of the Castanoan), Merriam (1979, food of Western Mono),
Myers (1978, food of the Cahto), Olmsted and Stewart (1978, food of the
Achumawi), Powers (1877a, food of California tribes), Steward (1943, food of
Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni), Stewart (1942, food of Ute-Southern Paiute),
and Voegelin (1942, food of the Modoc).
Odonata
Aeshnidae (darners)
Aeshna multicolor Hagen, nymph
Ebeling
(1986:
26) lists the nymph of the common blue darner, Aeshna multicolor, among
the insects used as food by the Indians of the arid regions of the West.
Miscellaneous Odonata
See
Hrdlicka (1908, food of the Tarahumare).
Orthoptera
Acrididae (short-horned grasshoppers)
Arphia pseudonietana Thomas, adult
Camnula pellucida Scudder, adult
Melanoplus bivittatus Say, adult
Melanoplus devastator Scudder, adult
Melanoplus differentialis Thomas, adult
Melanoplus femurrubrum DeGeer, adult
Melanoplus sanguinipes Fabr. (= M. mexicanus mexicanus
Saussure; reported as M. atlanis Riley by Essig 1931), adult
Melanoplus sp.
Oedaloenotus enigma Scudder, adult
Schistocerca shoshone Thomas (= S. venusta Scudder),
adult
One
needs only to briefly scan the numerous reports to concur with Sutton's
conclusion (1988: 11-22) that grasshoppers and locusts were widely used
throughout the Great Basin and were a very important resource.
Pattie (1831: 100)
encountered a group of "Grasshopper Indians" [apparently Ute,
according to Sutton] at the headwaters of the Arkansas River in east-central
Colorado. The Indians were said to
"derive their name from gathering grasshoppers, drying them, and
pulverizing them, with the meal of which they make mush and bread; and this is
their chief article of food."
Taylor (1859:
205-206) states:
The Indians take the grasshoppers in
great numbers by sweeping them into holes or piles, or by surrounding them with
fire and driving them into the centre, and afterwards roasting and pounding
them for food. But this is always found
to sicken the Indians -- a fact which has been noted by the pioneer settlers
and natives of old, as also by many travellers and voyagers who have visited
California and the Rocky Mountain country, and also by the Jesuits of Lower
California.
Taylor mentions (p. 209) "But the good counsels of
the missionaries, after their appearance in 1722, when this species of food
occasioned among them a great sickness, caused them to leave off using them,
though some of the neophytes still would eat them in the years when food became
scarce from their ravages in the sowings."
Essig (1931, p. 24) says, "There seems to be no foundation for the
supposition that grasshoppers sickened the Indians as related above, because not
only the American Indians but many other primitive races regularly consumed
quantities of these insects."
When Peter
Simmonds (1859; vide Ebeling 1986: 28) sampled grasshoppers that had
been prepared by "Digger" Indians by dipping them in salt water and
then pit-baking them for 15 minutes, he concluded, ". . . if one could
divest himself of the idea of eating an insect as we do an oyster or shrimp,
without other preparation than simple roasting, they would not be considered
very bad eating, even by more refined epicures then the Digger Indians."
Palmer (1871:
426-427) describes the collection of grasshoppers as follows:
By the Diggers of California and the
Plains grasshoppers are caught in great numbers. When the insect attains its best condition,
the Indians select some favorable locality and dig several little pits, in
shape somewhat like inverted funnels, the aperture being narrower at the
surface than at the base, the object being to prevent the insect which chances
to tumble in from hopping out again. The
pits being ready, an immense circle is formed, the surrounding grass is set on
fire, and the Indians, men, women, and children, station themselves at proper
intervals around the fiery belt, keeping up a continual ring of flame, until
the luckless grasshoppers are corraled in the pits or roasted at the
brink. They are eaten after being mixed
with pounded acorns, and constitute one of the national dishes. Grasshoppers are sometimes gathered into
sacks saturated with salt, and placed in a heated trench, covered with hot
stones, for fifteen minutes, and are then eaten as shrimps, or they are ground
and put into soup or mush. . . . Grasshoppers are pounded up with service,
hawthorn, or other berries. The mixture
is made into small cakes, pressed hard, and dried in the sun for future use.
Powell (1875; vide
Fowler and Fowler 1971: 48; vide Sutton 1988: 18-19) noted that grasshoppers
and crickets [probably Anabrus] were very important foods of the Utes:
Soon after they [grasshoppers] were
fledged and before their wings were sufficiently developed for them to fly
[late spring or summer], or later in the season when they are chilled with
cold, great quantities are collected by sweeping them up with brush brooms, or
they are driven into pits, by beating the ground with sticks. When thus collected they are roasted in trays
like seeds and ground into meal and eaten as mush or cakes. Another method of preparing them is to roast
great quantities of them in pits filled with embers and hot ashes, much in the
same manner as yant [Agave deserti or A. utahensis,
according to Sutton] is prepared for consumption. When these insects are abundant, the season
is one of many festivities. When
prepared in this way these insects are considered very great delicacies.
Powell (1875: 133
[1957 abridged edition]), referring to the Shivwits on the Rio Virgen, a
tributary of the Colorado River, wrote:
During the autumn, grasshoppers are
very abundant. When cold weather sets
in, these insects are numbed, and can be gathered by the bushel. At such a time, they dig a hole in the sand,
heat stones in a fire near by, put some in the bottom of the hole, put on a
layer of grasshoppers, then a layer of hot stones, and continue this, until
they put bushels on to roast. There they
are left until cool, when they are taken out, thoroughly dried, and ground into
meal. Grasshopper gruel, or grasshopper
cake, is a great treat.
Several
of the men with Edward Kern in 1845 near the headwaters of the Kern River in
the southern Owens Valley, after putting three Indians to flight, returned with
a small sack containing a dark chocolate-colored substance, which was
"very palatable with coffee." Kern
(1876: 483) states: "I have
seen the same dish among the Indians of California; it is prepared from roasted
grasshoppers and large crickets, pounded up, and mixed with, when procurable,
some kind of animal grease."
Hoffman (1878:
465-466) states:
Some of the tribes will adhere to
the most disgusting varieties of food, in spite of the partial advantages of
civilization with which they come in contact. . . . Some of the Shoshonees
obtain some food from settlements, but subsist chiefly upon what game and fish
they can secure in addition to lizards, grasshoppers, etc....Their mode of
preparing grasshoppers is in this wise:
a fire is built covering an area of from 20 to 30 feet square, and as
the material is consumed to coals and ashes, all the Indians start out and form
an extensive circle, driving the grasshoppers with blankets or bunches of brush
toward the centre, where they are scorched or disabled, when they are
collected, dried, and ground into meal.
With the addition of a small quantity of water this is worked and
kneaded into dough, formed into small cakes, and baked in the sand under a
fire. Generally ground grass seed is
mixed with water, baked, and eaten alone, but frequently it is mixed with this
insect flour, giving it a better consistence.
The Pah-Utes on the banks of the Colorado River use this sort of food
more generally than the Shoshonees. The
latter raise some corn, melons, and musk-melons, and store great quantities of
pinon nuts, when in season. . . .
Of the
Seviches and Hualpais, who "are as filthy in their tastes as the
Pah-Utes," Hoffman says: "The
fruit of several species of Opuntia, grass-seed, gophers, dried lizards,
grasshoppers, and other large insects are eaten with apparent relish."
Hutchings
(1888:
428-429) states that grasshoppers were considered a great food luxury by the
Indians: "These are eaten as meat
and cooked in various ways. Sometimes
they are caught, threaded on a string, and hung over a fire until they are
slightly roasted, then eaten from the string.
At others the grass is set on fire, which both disables and cooks them;
when they are picked up and eaten, or stored for future use." Hutchings continues:
The most effectual method for
securing grasshoppers, when they are abundant, is to dig a hole sufficiently
deep to prevent their jumping out; then to form a circle of Indians, both old
and young, with a bush in each hand, and commence driving them towards it until
they fall in, and are there caught. They
are thence gathered into a sack, and saturated with salt water [doubtful,
according to Essig (1931), except near saline lakes]; after which a trench is dug,
in which a good fire is built, and when it is sufficiently heated, the ashes
are cleaned out, a little grass put upon the bottom, when the grasshoppers are
put in, and covered with hot rocks and earth until they are sufficiently
cooked. They are then eaten in the same
manner as we eat shrimps; or are put away to mix with acorn or seed mush, when
they are ground into a kind of paste.
Mooney (1890:
259-260) reported that the Cosumnes tribe of California gathered grasshoppers
and cooked them in pits.
The grasshopper hunt was a great event
in Digger society, and was conducted in a very systematic manner. A whole
settlement would turn out and begin operations by starting a number of small
fires at regular intervals in a circle through the woods, guiding the flame by
raking up the pine needles, and stamping out the fire when it spread too far.
When the fires burned out there was left a narrow strip of bare ground
enclosing a circular area of several acres, within which the game was confined.
A large fire was then kindled at a point inside of the circle, taking advantage
of the direction of the wind, and allowed to spread unchecked. The men, armed
with bows and arrows and accompanied by their dogs, kept to the windward in
front of the fire and shot down the rabbits and other small animals as the heat
drove them from cover, while the women, with their conical baskets on their
backs, followed up the fire to gather up the grasshoppers, which merely had
their wings singed by the fire, but were not killed. As a squaw picked up a
hopper she crushed its head between her thumb and finger to kill it, and then
tossed it over her shoulder into the basket.
When the hunt was over, a hole about
two feet deep was dug in the earth and filled with bark, which was then set on
fire. When the heat was most intense the coals were raked out and the
grasshoppers thrown in and thus roasted. . . .
The Indians
sometimes ate grasshoppers alive, but first pulled off the legs.
From
Chittenden and Richardson's account (1905, III:
1032-1033), the famous French missionary, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet did not
regard the grasshopper-eating Soshocos too highly:
The Soshocos are the most degraded
of the races of this vast continent...They roam over the desert and barren
districts of Utah and California, and that portion of the Rocky Mountains which
branches into Oregon. I have sometimes
met with families of these wretched Soshocos; they are really worthy of pity. .
. . While the Indians of the plains, who live on the flesh of animals, are tall,
robust, active and generally well-clad with skins, the Soshoco, who subsists
chiefly on grasshoppers and ants, is miserable, lean, weak and badly clothed;
he inspires sentiments of compassion in the minds of those who traverse the
unproductive region which he occupies.
Chittenden
and Richardson describe the Soshoco grasshopper hunt (circa 1850) as follows:
The principal portion of the Soshoco
territory is covered with wormwood [sagebrush], and other species of artemisia,
in which the grasshoppers swarm by myriads; these parts are consequently most
frequented by this tribe. When they are
sufficiently numerous, they hunt together.
They begin by digging a hole, ten or twelve feet in diameter by four or
five deep; then, armed with long branches of artemisia, they surround a field
of four or five acres, more or less, according to the number of persons who are
engaged in it. They stand about twenty
feet apart, and their whole work is to beat the ground, so as to frighten up
the grasshoppers and make them bound forward.
They chase them toward the centre by degrees -- that is, into the hole
prepared for their reception. Their
number is so considerable that frequently three or four acres furnish
grasshoppers sufficient to fill the resevoir or hole.
The Soshocos stay in that place as
long as this sort of provision lasts.
They, as well as other mortals, have their tastes. Some eat grasshoppers in soup, or boiled;
others crush them, and make a kind of paste from them, which they dry in the
sun or before the fire: others eat them en appalas -- that is, they take
pointed rods and string the largest ones on them; afterward these rods are
fixed in the ground before the fire, and, as they become roasted, the poor
Soshocos regale themselves until the whole are devoured.
As they rove from place to place,
they sometimes meet with a few rabbits, and take some grouse, but seldom kill
deer or other large animals.
The contrast between the Indian of
the plain and the destitute Soshoco is very striking; but poor as he is, like
the Hottentot, he loves devotedly his native soil.
Lewis (1905-1907?:
181), cites De Smet in saying, "The Shoshone of the more arid regions
lived largely on grasshoppers and other insects, with a few rabbits, grouse,
and deer, and do not seem to have been averse to eating any kind of animal that
came their way."
Fynn (1907: 87)
makes passing reference to locusts as among the foods of the American Indian.
Fladung (1924: 6)
states that some North American tribes were in the habit of eating large
quantities of Rocky Mountain locusts.
In a
letter to the 1924 Pathfinder weekly paper, A.L. Gillis of Mt.
Pleasant, Iowa, wrote:
I saw an article in your magazine
about Indians eating grasshoppers. About
70 years ago my grandfather was agent for the Pawnee Indians on their reservation
in what is now western Nebraska. I have often heard my father, who was then a
boy, tell of those Indians eating grasshoppers and the interesting way in which
they caught them. They would dig a deep
hole in the ground and then, choosing a time when there was no wind and when a
fire would burn on the prairie slowly and could be kept under control, they
would encircle several acres around this hole with a ring of fire and drive the
hoppers into the hole and capture them by the bushel. They were then dried and ground into meal to
be mixed with their corn meal and made into bread.
Jensen (1930; vide
Madsen and Kirkman 1988) makes no reference to insects as food, but relative to
the Great Salt Lake, he states, "at times shifts of the wind blew clouds
of the grasshoppers out upon the lake, where they were drowned and washed in
upon the shores in great windrows, in some cases, pickled by the brine,
remaining several years" (see below under Madsen and Kirkman).
Essig (1931)
states that: "Grasshoppers were
held in the greatest and most universal favor.
They were always abundant in many parts of the state every year. They constituted a clean, nutritious, and
healthy food. The common method of
preparation was to roast them in the hot coals and ashes and then grind them
into a meal which could be made into a gruel or mixed with acorn meal into a
combination mush-gruel, or baked into a bread." According to Essig, the most abundant species
in the high mountain meadows throughout California is "the yellow-winged"
or "pellucid grasshopper," Camnula pellucida (Scudder), and
associated with it in northern California and the Sacramento Valley in large
numbers, were "the lesser migratory locust," Melanoplus atlanis
(Riley); "the red-legged locust," M. femur-rubrum (DeGeer);
"the two-striped locust," M. bivittatus (Say); and "the
valley grasshopper," Oedaloenotus enigma (Scudder). The dominant species in the western Sierra
foothills and the Sacramento Valley was "the devastating
grasshopper," Melanoplus devastator Scudder, while in the lower San
Joaquin Valley "the differential grasshopper," M. differentialis
(Thomas), occurred in abundance along the rivers and in marsh areas. In the more arid areas of southern California
and the foothills, "the large green valley grasshopper," Schistocerca
venusta Scudder, was abundant.
According to Essig, all of these species, and, probably, others, were
consumed.
Essig
relates as follows the observations of a relative of his who lived in the
Sacramento Valley during the early 1850s:
The method then used in that place
was to build a large fire which was reduced to a bed of coals. The Indians then formed a large circle and
drove the grasshoppers into the coals where they were soon roasted, removed and
eaten at once or preserved for the future.
In other places pits were dug in which the fire was built and into which
the grasshoppers were driven or deposited.
At times the insects were captured and killed and dried in the sun,
after which they were ground into a meal.
According to Reagan
(1934a: 54) it was alleged that the Goshute of Deep Creek country in
Utah “dried grasshoppers for eating."
Steward (1938: 34),
in his study of the Basin-Plateau tribes of eastern California, Nevada, Idaho
and Utah, mentions that grasshoppers and Mormon crickets were extremely
abundant in some years and could be taken in quantities that would last for
months.
Lowie (1939: 327)
reported the Washo boiled grasshoppers in baskets, and also cooked locusts in
the ground and dried them. A long-legged
insect also served as food. Lowie gives the Washo terms for these insects.
Morgan (1947: 255;
vide Sutton 1988: 13) described repeated grasshopper infestations in the Salt
Lake area in the 1850s and 1860s, many of the grasshoppers falling into the
lake and being washed up in long windrows on the shore (see Madsen and Kirkman
1988 for the food relevance of this).
Volney
H. Jones, in Burgh and Scoggin (1948: 94-99) reported that insect
remains recovered from a storage cist along the Yampa River on the Utah-Colorado
border were grasshoppers. The material, from a cache recovered during
excavations of Mantles Cave in northwestern Colorado, and dated to roughly
post-A.D. 650, were analyzed and found to be partly sand and partly insect
remains in a fairly comminuted state with a few scattered parts of leaves and
plant stems. Jones reports:
The insect remains are almost wholly
composed of grasshoppers of the first, second, third and fourth instars. All of those that could be identified belong
to the genus Melanoplus, and appear to be mostly of one species, though
there may be more than one. Most of them
are adult, and the majority are in the second and fourth instars. The bodies are finely divided, and the parts
are jammed together in the greatest confusion, legs sticking into heads, legs
clumped together, etc., as if they had been mashed or chopped or ground up into
a solid mass.
Other types of insects in the sample included
unidentified fly pupae, an ant, and a few beetles that were considered
intrusive. Jones concluded that the
material from the cache was a stored food supply.
Ogden (Rich
and Johnson 1950: 133-134), in February of 1826, observed Northern Paiute
in Idaho with grasshoppers and ants gathered and stored the preceding summer,
and which provide food for nearly four months of the year.
Orr (1952; vide
Madsen and Kirkman 1988) described a cache of grasshoppers that was recovered
from Crypt Cave along the lower Humboldt River.
Garth's (1953)
account is summarized as follows by Ebeling (1986: 182):
To gather grasshoppers, the Atsugewi
tied willows together to make a strip 30-40 feet long and tied dry grass to it
at intervals. They then set the dry
grass on fire, and two men ran across a grasshopper-infested field, carrying
the flaming line of willows between them.
Grasshoppers jumped into the flames and died; they were then easily
gathered. In the early morning when
grasshoppers were inactive because of the low temperature, they were knocked
off bushes into a burden basket with a stick.
Whichever way they were captured, the Atsugewi prepared them for eating
by cooking them in an earth oven for about an hour, then putting them away to
dry for two days. If stored, the dried
insects were ground up to prepare them for eating.
Gudde
and Gudde (1961) furnish a translation of Heinrich Lienhard's 1846
account of his westward trek from St. Louis to Sutter's Fort, including an
encounter with an Indian on the South Fork of the Humboldt River. Leinhard had requested the Indian to dig some
edible roots for him and he thoroughly enjoyed the yellowish parsnip-tasting
roots that were presented (pp. 132-133):
The Indian seemed to be pleased with
my confidence in him, especially since I seemed to enjoy the roots which he had
dug for me. Taking my stick away from me
again, he walked away quickly and dug diligently for more roots. As soon as he had a small quantity, he jumped
eagerly after some big grasshoppers, a few of which he brought back with him. He pressed one of the largest with its long,
leaping legs against a piece of root, opened his mouth, and moved his jaws as
though he were eating, although he wasn't.
Then he offered both grasshopper and root to me, just as one would offer
a piece of bread and butter to a child.
The Indian seemed surprised that this time I did not want to accept what
he offered. To convince me that he
wasn't expecting anything unusual of me, he himself bit off a piece of the
upper body of the forked grasshopper together with the head and a part of the
root. He chewed this meat vigorously
with the vegetable side dish, gesturing to show me how good it tasted. When he thought he had convinced me entirely,
he again offered this marvelous delicacy to me.
But in spite of his persuasive words without the use of words, I couldn't
be induced to follow his good example.
The expression on his face seemed to show that he felt sorry for me, and
I should not be at all surprised if he thought to himself that these white men
were quite stupid and didn't know what was really good. The remaining roots, however, I enjoyed
thoroughly, and since Thomen, who had just joined us, also found them good, the
Indian walked off once more and brought back quite a supply of them.
Graham (1965: 167) reported that
grasshopper parts were recovered from a human coprolite from Wetherill Mesa in
Colorado.
Bryant (1967
[1848]: 162-163, 168) describes, among encounters with the Utah Indians, an
occasion when three women appeared,
. . . bringing baskets containing a
substance, which, upon examination, we ascertained to be service-berries,
crushed to a jam and mixed with pulverized grasshoppers. This
composition being dried in the sun until it becomes hard, is what may be called
the 'fruitcake' of these poor children of the desert. No doubt these women regarded it as one of
the most acceptable offerings they could make to us. We purchased all they brought with them,
paying them in darning needles and other small articles, with which they were
much pleased. The prejudice against the
grasshopper 'fruitcake' was strong at first, but it soon wore off, and none of
the delicacy was thrown away or lost.
At the nearby Indian encampment, Bryant's party saw
large numbers of the grasshoppers, or crickets, being prepared for
pulverization.
Bryant
continues:
The Indians of this region, in order
to capture this insect with greater facility, dig a pit in the ground. They then make what hunters call a surround;
- that is, they form a circle at a distance around this pit, and drive the
grasshoppers or crickets into it, when they are easily secured and taken. After being killed, they are baked before the
fire or dried in the sun, and then pulverized between smooth stones. Prejudice aside, I have tasted what are
called delicacies, less agreeable to the palate. Although the Utahs are a powerful and warlike
tribe, these Indians appeared to be wretchedly destitute.
Further on, Bryant mentions that the Digger Indians had
a mixture of parched sunflower seeds and grasshoppers for exchange.
John
Wesley Powell (Fowler and Fowler 1971) provided a description of insect
collecting by the Ute/Southern Paiute:
Grasshoppers and crickets form a
very important part of the food of these people. Soon after they are fledged and before their
wings are sufficiently developed for them to fly, or later in the season when
they are chilled with cold, great quantities are collected by sweeping them up
with brush brooms, or they are driven into pits, by beating the ground with
sticks. When thus collected they are
roasted in trays like seeds and ground into meal and eaten as mush or
cakes. Another method of preparing them
is to roast great quantities of them in pits filled with embers and hot ashes.
. . . When these insects are abundant, the season is one of many
festivities. When prepared in this way
these insects are considered very great delicacies.
Smith (1974: 50-51) reported that the Uintahs, but not the
White River or Uncompaghres, ate grasshoppers, using willow sticks to knock
them to the ground after which they were put into a basket or sack. The legs were removed and the grasshoppers
were baked in a fire on the sand. After being cooked and cooled they were
ground on a flat rock. “They were so rich they would just eat a little bit at a
time. Take a pinch between your fingers and eat it. It was good.” Another
method was to cook them in a pit with hot stones.
Bitten
and Wilcox (1978), in summarizing grasshopper outbreaks in territorial
Utah make no mention of insects as human food, but they cite early reports of
grasshoppers being washed ashore in huge numbers along the shores of the Great
Salt Lake (pp. 344, 348). These
windrows, sometimes reported as two to six feet high, were in fact tapped as a
food resource by the Indians (see Madsen 1989 below). Bitten and Wilcox also mention (p. 347) that
chickens were helpful in eliminating pest insects in gardens and to a limited
extent on the farmlands.
Goldschmidt (1978)
mentions (p. 347) that the Nomlaki harvested grasshoppers by driving them into
a concentrated area and firing the grass.
Riddell (1978)
gives an excellent account of the foods of the Wadatkut Paiute in the Honey
Lake region of Lassen County, California, including their use of insects (pp.
51-52):
Late in the summer nishu (apparently
Mormon crickets) and kua (locusts), when they occurred in great numbers, were
gathered for food. Good places to
collect nishu were Secret Valley and in the vicinity of Doyle. They were collected by being scraped into a
container with the hands, or by being picked from sagebrush where they would be
clustered in great numbers. The
gathering had to be done early in the morning before the insects became warm
and active. After they had been gathered
a pit would be dug into the ground and a fire built in the pit. When the fire was reduced to a quantity of
hot coals, the insects were dumped into the pit and immediately covered with
earth. From time to time they were
sampled to see if they were done. When
cooked, the insects were uncovered and removed from the pit, and laid in the
sun to get perfectly dry. After drying
they were sacked for future use. Before
they were eaten, however, their heads and legs were pulled off and
discarded. The body was ground into a
flour with a mano and metate and eaten dry, or made into a soup which had a
flavor somewhat like that of dried deer meat (deer meat also could be ground
into a flour coarser than acorn flour, and made into soup). Flour made from nishu could be salted to
taste when eaten.
Kua were caught and their legs torn
off immediately, and then prepared in the same manner as nishu. The kua were caught wherever they were found
in sufficient quantities, and were simply picked from the brush, apparently
while cold and inactive in the morning.
Bryan (1979:
228), working in Smith Creek Cave in eastern Nevada, found grasshopper parts (Melanoplus
sp.) in dung layers dating back to about 2,100 years.
Noting
that Southern Paiute informants had told Kelley (1971) that they gathered
grasshoppers from rabbit brush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus), Ebeling
captured three species resting on this plant in October near Bishop in Owens
Valley, i.e., Melanoplus femurrubrum, M. devastator and Arphia
pseudonietana. Although these seemed
to be the only species readily evident at the time, Ebeling notes that there is
a seasonal succession that would have been available to the Paiute. Rabbit brush is abundant there, covering
miles of the valley floor.
Madsen
and Kirkman (1988) reported evidence from Lakeside Cave on the shore of
Great Salt Lake, that salted, sun-dried grasshoppers (Melanoplus sanguinipes)
that had washed up on the beaches were collected, then winnowed in the cave to
remove the sand before consumption.
Grasshopper parts, estimated from samples to be in the millions, were
concentrated in the lower five cultural units, strata deposited about 4500
years ago. Human fecal deposits were
associated with all strata where grasshopper parts were found and contained
oolitic sand and hopper parts as their principal components.
According
to the authors, the connection between beach and cave became obvious in the
summer of 1985, a grasshopper plague year, when they investigated a report of
"millions" of grasshoppers washed up on a nearby beach:
Windrows of grasshoppers that had
flown or been blown into the lake and which had been formed by wave action of
varying intensity into lines of salted and sun-dried grasshoppers stretched for
tens of kilometers along the beach. Up
to five separate windrows were identified in any one place and ranged in size
from a few centimeters wide to over 1.5m wide by 20 cm thick. Based on counts of two 1-liter samples, the
number of individual hoppers in these windrows ranged from an estimated 1,800
to 34,000 per meter. The windrows were
well sorted and contained virtually nothing but grasshoppers coated with a thin
veneer of oolitic sand. . . .
The
authors conducted several tests to determine the caloric return rate of
collecting grasshoppers from the windrows compared to collecting other local
food resources, principally plant resources.
Proximate analysis showed the sun-dried grasshoppers to contain 3,010
kcal/kg. The authors state:
Based on these figures, we believe the
return rates for grasshopper procurement around the Great Salt Lake greatly
exceed any other known 'collected' resource.
Return rates ranged from 41,598 kcal/hour for the smallest sample to
714,409 kcal/hour for the largest sample, with an average of 272,649 kcal/hour
for the five samples. Put more descriptively and assuming a daily caloric
requirement of 2,000 kcal, this means that, on the average, one person, in one
hour, could feed four people for more than a month. . . .
In view
of several uncertainties, to be conservative in comparing the caloric return
from collected grasshoppers to other collected Great Basin resources, Madsen
and Kirkman used only 1/10th the experimental grasshopper return; even at this
reduced rate, the grasshopper return for labor expended (27,265 kcal/hr of
work) was 16 times higher than the highest-ranking seed resource, 1,699 kcal/hr
for bulrush seeds.
Many
other observers have described the use of grasshoppers: see Aginsky (1943, food of the Central Sierra
tribes), Barnett (1937, food of Oregon coastal Indians), Beals (1933, food of
the Nisenan), Bean (1972, food of the Cahuilla), Bean and Theodoratus (1978,
food of the Pomo), Callaghan (1978, food of the Lake Miwok), Camp (1923, food
of the Paiute in southwestern Utah), Carr (1951, food of the Cherokee), Cowan
(1865, food of the California Digger Indians), E. Davis (1965, food of the
Kuzedika), J. Davis (1961, Chumash involved in grasshopper trade), DeFoliart
(1989, acridid species used), De Quille (1877, food of Northern Paiute), Dixon
(1905, food of the Northern Maidu), Downs (1966, food of the Washo), Driver
(1937, food in the southern Sierra Nevada; 1939, food in northwestern
California), Drucker (1937, food of southern California tribes), Elliot (1909,
food of the "Snake Indians"), Essene (1942, food of the Round Valley,
California groups), Fowler (1986, food of Great Basin tribes), Gifford (1940,
food of the Apache-Pueblo), Gifford and Kroeber (1937, food of the Pomo),
Harrington (1942, food of the Chumash), Heizer (1954, food of the Utah Utes),
Hrdlicka (1908, food of the Tarahumare), Johnson (1978, food of the Yani),
Kelly (1932, food of the Surprise Valley Paiute; 1964, food of the southern
Paiute), Landberg (1965, food of the Chumash), Lando and Modesto (1977, food of
the Cahuilla), Lapena (1978, food of the Wintu), Levy (1978a, food of Eastern
Miwok; 1978b, food of the Costanoan), Lowie (1909a, food of the Northern
Shoshone), Malouf (1974, food of the Gosiute), Muir (1911, food of the Digger
Indians), Myers (1978, food of the Cahto), Olmsted and Stewart (1978, food of
the Achumawi), Powers (1877a, food of the Yokut and Konkau; 1877b, food of the
Northern Paiute), Ray (1933, not eaten by the Southeast Salish), Riddell (1978,
food of the Maidu and Konkow), Ross (1956, food of the "Snake
Indians"), Shimkin (1947, food of the Wind River Shoshone), Silver (1978,
food in Shasta territory), Steward (1933, food of Owens Valley Paiute; 1941,
food of Nevada Shoshoni; 1943, food of Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni), Stewart
(1941, food of Northern Paiute; 1942, food of Ute-Southern Paiute), Strong
(1969, food of the desert people), and Voegelin (1942, food in northeast
California).
Gryllacrididae (wingless long-horned grasshoppers)
Stenopelmatus fuscus Haldeman
Ebeling
(1986:
26) lists the Jerusalem cricket, Stenopelmatus fuscus Haldeman, among
the insects used as food by the Indians of the arid areas of the West.
Gryllidae (crickets)
Gryllus assimilis Fabr., complex
Essig (1931)
believes that Power's statement in 1877 that hallih or crickets were
used as food by the Nishinam of Placer County was in error as crickets are
scarce there while grasshoppers are abundant.
According to Essig, the black field cricket, Gryllus assimilis
Fabr., is very abundant, however, along the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.
Sutton (1988: 23)
notes that winged gryllid crickets of the genera Nemobius, Miogryllus
and Gryllus (= Acheta assimilis) are common in the Great Basin
and probably were used although none have been mentioned in the ethnographic
literature.
See also De Quille
(1877, food of Northern Paiute), Fladung (1924, food of Shoshones), Lowie (1909a,
food of northern Shoshone).
Tettigoniidae (long-horned grasshoppers)
Anabrus simplex Haldeman, nymph, adult
The
Mormon cricket, Anabrus simplex (actually a wingless tettigoniid
grasshopper), was a resource of major importance and was probably used by
virtually every group in the Basin (Sutton, pp. 23-32). Sutton cites historical accounts of the
plague proportions of this insect, frequently lasting for years on end, notes
the organized manner by which they were harvested (involving large numbers of people),
and concludes that it provided huge returns for the labor invested. Ethnographic accounts of groups (men, women
and children) spending days and considerable labor in the harvest preparation
certainly suggest that crickets were not an ephemeral resource taken on an
"encounter basis." The
crickets probably constituted a formal part of the seasonal round, and Sutton
states, "Hundreds or thousands of pounds of very high quality food for a
few days of labor would have been a wise investment, especially since the
resulting food was storable."
A
number of early writers make it evident that the Mormon cricket, Anabrus
simplex Haldeman (Orthoptera:
Tettigoniidae), was widely used as food by Indian tribes in the western
states. Domenech (1860, 2:
64; vide Sutton 1988: 30) noted collection and preparation of [Mormon] crickets
by the Ute Indians. Palmer (1871:
426-427) reported that various berries collected by the tribes in Oregon are
sometimes mixed, for variety, with the dried eggs of salmon or with crickets
[probably Anabrus], dried and pulverized. Glover (1872: 75) reported that
the Indians in Utah eat the crickets, generally roasted and pounded into a
course-grained meal. Parkman (1873: 208) stated that the
"Root-Diggers" turn the crickets "to good account by making them
into a sort of soup, pronounced by certain unscrupulous trappers to be
extremely rich." Thomas (1875: 904) reported that,
"This is the species eaten by the Indians.
Not only do they eat them after roasting, but often without any other
preparation than simply pulling off their legs and head."
Gottfredson (1874: 15),
in Thistle Valley (August, 1864) in the Sevier River drainage in the east
central Basin, described a relatively labor-efficient method of collecting
Mormon crickets by driving them into a stream:
"The squaws [placed] baskets in the ditch for the crickets to float
into. The male Indians with long willows
strung along about twenty feet apart whipping the ground behind the crickets
driving them towards the ditch. . . . [The crickets] tumbled into the ditch and
floated down into the baskets. . . .They got more than fifty
bushels." The crickets were
prepared as follows:
They had a lot of berries that they
had gathered before which they crushed with the crickets and made into loaves
the size of a persons head. They then
dug holes in the ground about eighteen inches deep and buried the loaves and
left them for about a month. . . . The berries they used were service berries
which were plentyful in the hills, and wild currants, both black and red that
grew along the creek, and some squaw berries and chokecherries.
(These cakes were widely known as "desert
fruitcake" according to Madsen and Kirkman [1988: 595].)
Around
the Great Salt Lake, about the time the first settlements were constructed in
1847, Lorenzo Young reported:
"The ground was black with black crickets; millions of them. . . .
an unusual number of Indians . . . gathered together . . . . were harvesting
them. . . . [they depended upon this food as one of their principle [sic]
supplies for winter use.]" (Anonymous
1884: 3-4; vide Madsen and Kirkman 1988).
In
Utah, Bancroft (1889: 262) states that: "The ground was covered with millions of
black crickets [Anabrus simplex] which the Indians were harvesting for
their winter food. An unusual number of
natives had assembled for this purpose."
Bancroft quotes from a manuscript (1847) by Lorenzo Young to describe
how the crickets were harvested:
The Indians made a corral twelve or
fifteen feet square, fenced about with sage brush and grease-wood, and with
branches of the same drove them into the enclosure. Then they set fire to the brush fence, and
going amongst them, drove them into the fire.
Afterward they took them up by the thousands, rubbed off their wings [?]
and legs, and after two or three days separated the meat, which was, I should
think, an ounce or half an ounce of fat to each cricket.
Young slightly overestimated the amount of fat per
cricket, as a whole dried Mormon cricket weighs only a little more than 1.0
gram, which is 1/28th of an ounce.
Coville (1897: 104)
reported that: "One curious use of
the plant [blueberry elder, Sambucus glauca], now rarely resorted to,
but formerly common among the Snake [Northern Paiute] Indians, consists of
punching out the pith from sections of the stem, ramming them full of large
crickets, Anabrus simplex Hald., and plugging the ends. The contents of the stems were used for food
in the winter."
Dried
crickets were observed as food in the Humboldt Sink in 1846 by Aram (1907:
628): "We came to an Indian
village, they came out in strong force but finding us friendly, they treated us
kindly. They were digging roots on a
creek bottom. They looked like a small
red carrot. They gave us some that were
cooked, they tasted like a sweet potato.
They also offered us some dried crickets but those we declined, thinking
they would not relish well with us."
Egan (1917:
228-233), in delightfully written first-person accounts of experiences in the
early West, confirms the use of ants by the Indians, and describes in detail a
Mormon cricket drive. The procedure was
basically to dig a series of trenches, each about 30 to 40 feet long and in the
shape of a new moon, cover the trenches with a thin layer of stiff wheat grass
straw, drive the crickets into the grass covering the trenches, and then set
fire to the grass. Egan mentions that he
thought they were going to a great deal of trouble for a few crickets. As the drive began, "We followed them on
horseback and I noticed that there were but very few crickets left behind. As they went down, the line of crickets grew
thicker and thicker till the ground ahead of the drivers [men, women and
children] was black as coal with the excited, tumbling mass of
crickets." After the grass had been
fired, Egan observed that in some places the trenches were more than half full
of dead crickets. "I went down
below the trenches and I venture to say there were not one out of a thousand
crickets that passed those trenches."
Once
the drive was over, the men and children had done their part and were sitting
around while the women gathered the catch into large baskets which could be
carried on their backs. Egan says, in
obvious admiration:
Now here is what I saw a squaw doing
that had a small baby strapped to a board or a willow frame, which she carried
on her back with a strap over her forehead:
When at work she would stand or lay the frame and kid where she could
see it at any time. She soon had a large
basket as full as she could crowd with crickets. Laying it down near the kid, she took a
smaller basket and filled it. I should
judge she had over four bushels of the catch.
But wait, the Indians were leaving for their camp about three or four
miles away. This squaw sat down beside
the larger basket, put the band over her shoulders, got on her feet with it,
then took the strapped kid and placed him on top, face up, picked up the other
basket and followed her lord and master, who tramped ahead with nothing to
carry except his own lazy carcass. There
were bushels of crickets left in the trenches, which I suppose they would
gather later in the day.
Egan
learned that the crickets were used to make a bread that was decidedly black in
color. They were dried, then ground on
the same mill used to grind pine nuts or grass seed, "making a fine flour
that will keep a long time, if kept dry."
His Indian companion said "the crickets make the bread good, the
same as sugar used by the white woman in her cakes."
Clayton (1921: 335)
reported that Brigham Young advised the company against giving guns and
ammunition to the Indians [the Utes?] because they would be used to shoot the
cattle, advising them instead to "let them eat crickets, there's a plenty
of them."
Henderson (1931:
13-14), in Utah, quoted from several earlier references to the Mormon cricket
as food, including from John Young who reported: "They (the Indians) kept on hand baskets
made purposely to put in the creeks to catch the loathsome insects as they
floated down the streams, and they caught them by the tons, sun-dried them,
then roasted them and made them into a silage that would keep for
months." Several authors are quoted
relative to the use of crickets and grasshoppers by the tribes in the Salt Lake
Valley. Henderson also quotes from an
article titled "Feasting on Crickets" in the September 1904 issue of
"The Improvement Era":
An echo of early times is reported
from Rush Valley. It appears that
millions of black crickets have appeared, coming from Death Canyon and Skull
Valley. Near Harker's Canyon the
mountains for miles about have been denuded of every vestige of green. The pests are headed towards Vernon. The Indians are gathering them to eat,
preserving them for winter use, while the coyotes have stopped killing sheep
and are feasting on crickets upon which, like the prairie chicken, they are
growing sleek and fat.
Leechman (1944:
451), drawing on an earlier report by Coville (1897), suggests that the tubes
described by Drews were used as receptacles for Mormon crickets or other food
stored for winter use.
Chamberlin (1950: 8-9)
gives a description by John R. Young of how the Indians collected Mormon
crickets when they were attacking Mormon farms in 1848 and the irrigation
ditches were often full of the insects:
"Baskets purposely made to put in the creeks to catch the loathsome
insects as they floated down the streams, and they caught them by the tons,
sun-dried them, then roasted them and made them into a silage that would keep
for months. Their skill in this
convinces me that the coming of the crickets had been continuous for
ages."
Whiting (1950:
17-19) reported that the Harney Valley, Oregon, Paiute gathered crickets: "About the fifteenth of July, families
began to congregate at Cow Creek, about five miles east of Harney. Families
from all over the valley and from the Hunibui Eater band to the north came to
gather crickets. The women went out
early in the morning and caught them, were back by sunrise, and spent the rest
of the day roasting, drying, and pounding them and putting them in bags to be
cached for the winter." Whiting
continues: "In the fall some of the
families went up to Canyon City, the men to hunt elk and the women to pick
huckleberries. During these wanderings
they were technically within the terrain of the Hunibui Eaters and Elk Eaters,
but inasmuch as these people wandered to the south to get crickets and
sometimes to get wada there was reciprocal exchange."
Wakeland (1959: 4)
relates that in 1890, northwest of Reno, Nevada, S.B. Doten (pers. comm. to
Wakeland, 1952) "stumbled onto a number of burlap bags filled with dried
Mormon crickets. He later saw Indians
grind these with dried grass seed in stone grinders and then make a paste which
they baked and ate."
Dillon (1966: 40)
mentions that the Indians near Mary's River (later called the Humboldt) brought
dried crickets into the camp, which they tried to trade for food.
Frison
and Huseas (1968: 22) found evidence of insect utilization in Leigh Cave
on the west flank of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. Charcoal from a hearth or roasting pit
produced a radiocarbon date of about 2220 B.C.
The authors state: "In and near this fire were the cooked remains
of several hundred large insects of the order Orthoptera and more commonly
known as the Mormon cricket (Anabrus simplex). The context suggests that the cave occupants
were roasting these insects for food."
Olmsted
and Stewart (1978) reported that in northern California the Achumawi
Indians remembered the periodic plagues of Mormon crickets as times of
plenty. They roasted the insects and
formed them into cakes for storage.
Lanner (1981: 148)
quoted a Northern Shoshoni consultant on the historical collection of
unidentified crickets: "In the
spring we would collect lots of young crickets when they are young. We used to mash them and dry them between
stones and eat them in pine-nut soup.
That's very rich food."
Madsen (1989:
22-25) gives a more popular account of the grasshopper studies reported by
Madsen and Kirkman, and adds information from studies on the rate of return per
unit of effort expended in collecting Mormon crickets in the same area: Crickets were collected from bushes, grass,
etc., at rates of 600 to 1,452 per hour, an average of nearly two and one-third
pounds or, at 1,270 calories per pound, an average of 2,959 calories per
hour. The crickets often reached
greatest densities along the margins of streams or other bodies of water which
lie in their line of march and which they will attempt to cross. In two such situations, they were collected
at the rates of 5,652 and 9,876 per hour, an average of nearly 18 1/2 pounds of
crickets or 23,479 calories per hour.
The first number (2,959 calories per hour) surpasses the return rate
from all local resources except small and large game animals, while the latter
compares favorably even with deer and other large game.
Madsen
places cricket collecting in a modern context by saying, "One person
collecting crickets from the water margin for one hour, yielding 18 and
one-half pounds, therefore accomplishes as much as one collecting 87 chili
dogs, 49 slices of pizza, or 43 Big Macs."
He concludes, "Our findings thus showed that the use of insects as
a food resource made a great deal of economic sense."
According
to Jones and Madsen (1991), ethnographic and ethnohistoric data
suggest that A. simplex was the most commonly collected insect resource
in the eastern Great Basin. Collection strategies varied, but included driving
the crickets into trenches, brush corrals, or streams, or less efficiently,
picking them by hand. To determine the
range in return rates that might apply to the Mormon cricket, Jones and Madsen
conducted experiments in which two collecting methods were compared, picking
them from the ground and vegetation in mid-day when they were most active, and
collecting them in shallow water where they had concentrated in a 3 m wide band
of low Juncus along the margin of a small reservoir. The crickets were in a "near-adult
instar" and migrating in bands. Average weight per cricket was found to be
2.77 g, and analyses yielded energy values of 1212 cal/kg (live weight) and
3450 cal/kg (dry wt.). The lower energy
value was used in subsequent calculations.
In the
experiment involving picking crickets from the ground and vegetation, the average
return rate was 2245 cal/hour; in picking crickets from the water's edge, the
average return rate was 20,869 cal/hr.
In applying their experimental data to published reports pertaining to
quantities of crickets, the authors estimate that return rates sometimes may
have exceeded 100,000 cal/hr when mass-collection techniques were used. The above return rates did not include
processing time for consumption or storage, but they still place Mormon
crickets well above most other gathered food resources.
Many
other observers have also described the use of Anabrus: see E. Davis (1965, food of the Kuzedika
Paiute), Dixon (1905, food of the Northern Maidu), Fowler (1986, food of Great
Basin tribes), Frison (1971, food of the late prehistoric Shoshoni), Harris (1940,
food of the White Knife Shoshoni), Kelly (1932, food of the Surprise Valley
Paiute), Lowie (1909, food of northern Shoshone), Malouf (1974, food of the
Gosiute), Napton and Heizer (1970, in human coprolites, Nevada), Olmsted and
Stewart (1978, food of the Achumawi), Powers (1877a, food of the Nishinam;
1877b, food of the Northern Paiute), Ray (1933, not eaten by the Southeast
Salish), Reagan (1934b, food of the Utes in Utah), Riddell (1978, see under
Acrididae), Ross (1956, food of the "Snake Indians"), Shimkin (1947,
food of the Wind River Shoshone), Silver (1978, food in the Shasta territory),
Steward (1933, food of the Owens Valley Paiute; 1941, food of the Nevada
Shoshone; 1943, food of the Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni), Stewart (1941, food
of the Northern Paiute; 1942, food of the Ute-Southern Paiute), Strong (1969,
food of the desert people), and Voegelin (1942, food of northeast California
Indians).
Plecoptera
Ebeling (1986:
182-183) notes that some Indians used adult and nymphal salmonflies or
stoneflies as food: "In the spring
the Atsugewi picked up adult salmonflies from the banks of streams in the early
morning, before the wind arose. They
removed the wings and boiled the insects for eating. . . ."
Perlodidae
Isoperla sp., nymph, adult
Ebeling (1986: 26)
lists Isoperla (= Isoperia) sp. nymphs and adults among the
insects used by Indians in the arid regions of the West. The nymphs are aquatic, living in rivers, and
are omnivores or predatory.
Pteronarcidae (giant stoneflies)
Pteronarcys californica Newport, nymph,
adult
Sutton (1985, 1988:
50-51) suggests that the California salmonfly, Pteronarcys californica
Newport, may have been an important food resource for the Modoc, Wintu, and
Achumawi Indians along the Pit River in Northeastern California (see also
Aldrich [1912b] and Essig [1931] under Diptera:
Rhagionidae). Ebeling (1986:
26) indicates that P. californicus was eaten in both the nymph and adult
stages. Other species of the genus may
also have been eaten, such as the giant stonefly, P. dorsata Say, which,
according to Arnett (1985: 109) has a wing expanse of 70-106 mm. The eggs are laid in water, and the nymphs
are found in small brooks, streams and rivers where they live under stones or
other debris and feed on plant material for as long as three years. They then ascend emergent vegetation where
the molt to the adult stage occurs. The
adults are nocturnal, poor fliers, and do not feed. Sutton provides references to the biology and
distribution of the group.
DuBois (1935; vide
Sutton 1985) reported that the Wintu gathered salmonflies in the morning before
their wings were strong enough to permit flight. They were either boiled, or if plentiful
enough, dried for winter use. Sapir
and Spier (1943; vide Sutton 1985) reported that salmonflies were
washed up in great numbers from the river onto the willows along the bank,
where the Yana gathered, cooked and used them as food. Garth (1953; vide Sutton 1985)
reported that salmonflies were plentiful along the Pit River and Lost Creek,
and the Atsugewi obtained them in the spring, picking them by hand from the
banks in the early morning before the wind arose. The wings were removed, and the body was
boiled and eaten.
See
also Johnson (1978, food of the Yani), Lapena (1978, food of the Wintu), and
Olmsted and Stewart (1978, food of the Achumawi).
References Cited (An * denotes reference not seen in
the original)
Aginsky, B.W.
1943. Culture element
distributions: XXIV - Central
Sierra. Univ. Calif. Pubs. Anthropol.
Rec. 8(4): 393-468.
Aginsky
studied the Central Sierra Indians including the Miwok, and more northerly
Yokut and Mono settlements. Grasshoppers
and caterpillars were widely used (pp. 397, 452). Methods used on grasshoppers by different
groups included: "Large basket,
sometimes more than 1, placed in clearing.
People circle and close in on basket, making noise and stamping on
ground to cause grasshoppers to jump into basket. Also build fence, toward which women chase
grasshoppers. Also soak in warm water and
eat"; "Driven into creek, picked up with basket and placed in hot
water"; "Catch by putting water in trench"; "Just burned
over ground and picked them up."
Caterpillars were: "Knocked
off of branches with sticks, and caught in baskets"; "Caught in trench";
"Picked off tree"; "Placed in hot water, boiled and, after water
squeezed out, eaten."
Aldrich, J.M.
1912a. Larvae of a saturniid moth used
as food by California Indians. J. New
York Entomol. Soc. 20: 28-31. (See
under Saturniidae)
Aldrich, J.M. 1912b.
Flies of the leptid genus Atherix used as food by California
Indians (Dipt.). Entomol. News 23:
159-163. (Rhagionidae)
Aldrich, J.M.
1921. Coloradia pandora Blake,
a moth of which the caterpillar is used as food by Mono Lake Indians. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 14: 36-38. (Saturniidae)
Ambro, R.D. 1967. Dietary-technological-ecological aspects of
Lovelock Cave coprolites. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Archaeol. Surv. Rpts. No.
70: 37-47.
The
author makes brief reference (pp. 39, 45) to insects in coprolite studies
related to those of Roust (1967) and suggests that insects were probably rarely
eaten in the vicinity of Lovelock Cave and Hidden Cave which are located in
western Nevada.
Aram, J. 1907. Reminiscences of Captain Joseph Aram. J. Am. Hist. 1: 623-632. (Tettigoniidae)
Arnett, R.H.
1985. American Insects: A Handbook of the Insects of America North of Mexico.
Florence, Kentucky: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 850 pp. (Arctiidae, Pteronarcyidae)
Bancroft, H.H.
1889. The works of Hubert Howe
Bancroft. Vol. XXVI. History of Utah, pp. 262, 279-281. San Francisco: The History Co., Publ. (Tettigoniidae)
Barnett, H.G.
1937. Culture element
distributions: VII - Oregon Coast. Univ. Calif. Pubs. Anthropol. Rec.
1(3): 155-219.
Barnett
reports (pp. 165-166) the use of parched grasshoppers, parched yellow-jacket
larvae, boiled caterpillars, and honey.
Barnett, H.G.
1939. Culture element
distributions: IX - Gulf of Georgia
Salish. Univ. Calif. Pubs. Anthropol.
Records 1(5): 221-295.
The
author reports (pp. 236, 277) no use of insects as food by the Gulf of Georgia
Salish in British Columbia. All
informants denied the use of caterpillars or yellowjacket larvae as food. The latter were used, however, as a
"salve" and to "train" warriors.
Barrett, S.A.
1936. The army worm: a food of the Pomo Indians. In R.H. Lowie (ed.), Essays in
Anthropology Presented to A.L. Kroeber, pp. 1-5. Berkeley:
Univ. Calif. Press. (Noctuidae)
Beals, R.L.
1933. Ethnology of the
Nisenan. Univ. Calif. Publ. in Am. Arch. and Ethnol. 31: 346-347. [What is the total pagination of this
article?]
Beals
(pp. 346-347) reports that the Nisenan ate nearly all available foods, but,
although some mammals, birds and reptiles were avoided, no insect or
invertebrate was mentioned as having been avoided, nor any edible plant. Beals summarized invertebrate use as follows:
All classes eaten, including grubs,
earthworms. Latter brought to surface of
damp spots at certain seasons by pounding ground with club. Roasted by shaking on trays with hot rocks.
Yellowjacket (Epen, P) larvae
roasted similarly. Nests found by men or
boys with unusually keen eyesight who followed insects on clear, cloudless
days. Lizard meat exposed to attract
yellowjackets and leg of grasshopper, colored white, inserted in their jaws
while eating to make it easier to follow them to nests. Hunter waited until all insects in nest at
twilight, placed ignited tuft of pine needles in hole, blowing smoke down. When insects stupified, nest dug up. Sometimes whole nest roasted over coals,
eaten with acorn soup. Some specialized
in this work.
Hornet nests burned at night with
pine-needle brush on stick. Man near
Forest Hill attempted by daylight; died of stings.
Grasshoppers, E.ni (P) caught by
driving toward narrow-mouthed pits dug in open place. Each man dug own. Around each, straw or pine needles scattered
for 6-8 ft. Grasshoppers driven by beating up brush; hide in grass and pine needles. These ignited. Some grasshoppers killed and roasted by fire;
others fly in holes, removed in fine mesh bags, each handful squeezed to kill
insects. When roasted at home in basket
with hot rocks, turn red. Dried, usually
saved until winter when pounded fine, mixed with acorn soup.
In mountains large area sometimes
covered with about 3 in. pine needles in which insects hid, which then fired,
killing, cooking them.
Grasshoppers considered healthful
food, acquiring virtues of medicinal plants eaten. As more plentiful in valley and foothills,
traded to mountain people for black oak acorns.
Bean, L.J. 1972. Mukat's People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern
California. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press, 201 pp.
Bean
(pp. 61-62), without referencing earlier literature, states that a large number
of insect and "worm" species were important foods of the Cahuilla of
southeastern California. Ant (?anet)
hills were dug up and the swarming ants were pushed into pits where they
roasted instantly on very hot rocks.
They were also boiled or parched.
Grasshopper (wi?it) swarms were common, and to harvest them, the
Cahuilla dug long trenches which they filled with heated rocks and sand. The grasshoppers were then scooped up and
pushed into the trenches. "Cricket
pupae [?] and cicadas (taciqal) also came in large numbers at times, and
were eagerly gathered and roasted as they, too, were considered
delicacies. After roasting they were
dried and stored for future use, to be eaten without further preparation or as
a condiment with other foods like acorn mush."
Bean
also mentions a worm called piyatem, "possibly an army worm,"
as a favorite treat of the Cahuilla. The
worms "appeared at the surface of the ground in abundance after warm
spring rains, and were collected in large quantities, prepared by parching, and
stored for future use." Their
arrival was celebrated by a first-fruit ritual as were those of other insects
and worms. Bean mentions that: "Wild bee larvae and honey were eaten in
historic times. The beehives of imported
honey bees were tended by the men and were individually owned. The honey was collected regularly, some
always being left for the continuation of normal beehive activity."
Bean, L.J.; Theodoratus, D. 1978.
Western Pomo and Northeastern Pomo.
In W.C. Sturtevant (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians
(R.F. Heizer, Vol. Ed.), 1978, pp. 289-305.
Grasshoppers,
caterpillars and larvae were among the animal foods of these Indian groups (pp.
290-291).
Bell, W.H.; Castetter, E.F. 1937. The utilization of mesquite and screwbean by
the aborigines in the American Southwest.
Univ. New Mex. Ethnobiol. Studies in the Am. Southwest Bull. 5,
pp. 22-23.* (Bruchidae)
Bequaert, J.C.
1922. The predaceous enemies of
ants. In: Ants of the American Museum Congo
Expedition. A contribution to the
myrmecology of Africa, W.M. Wheeler. Bull.
Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. 45: 271-331.
Bequaert
(pp. 329-331) cites a number of references to the use of insects as food,
including the use of ants and other insects by certain North American Indian
tribes.
Bettinger, R.L.
1982. Archaeology East of the Range
of Light: Aboriginal Human Ecology of
the Inyo-Mono Region, California.
Monogr. Calif. and Great Basin Anthropol., No. 1, p. 55. (Saturniidae)
Bettinger, R.L.
1985. Native life in desert
California: the Great Basin and its
aboriginal inhabitants. The Masterkey
59: 42-50. (Saturniidae)
Bidwell, J. 1890. The first emigrant train to California. Century Mag. 19: 106-130.
(Ephydridae)
Bidwell, J. 1928. Echoes of the Past about California. (M.M. Quaife, ed.). Chicago, p. 52. (Aphididae)
Bitton, D.; Wilcox, L.P.
1978. Pestiferous ironclads; the
grasshopper problem in pioneer Utah. Utah
Hist. Quart. 46(4): 336-355. (Acrididae)
Blackburn, T.
1976-1977. A query
regarding the possible hallucinogenic effects of ant ingestion in south-central
California. J. Calif. Anthropol. 3(2): 78-81.
(Formicidae)
Blake, E.A.; Wagner, M.R. 1987.
Collection and consumption of pandora moth, Coloradia pandora
lindseyi (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae),
larvae by Owens Valley and Mono Lake Paiutes.
Bull. Entomol. Soc. Am.
33: 23-27. (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae)
Bodenheimer, F.S.
1951. Insects as Human Food. The Hague:
W. Junk, 352 pp. (A source of
several references.)
Bolton, H.E.
1919. Kino's Historical Memoir of
Pimeria Alta. 2 vols. Cleveland:
Arthur H. Clark Co., Vol II, pp. 56, 58-60. (Aphididae)
Bolton, H.E.
1927. Fray Juan Crespi, Missionary
Explorer on the Pacific Coast 1769-1774.
New York: Ams Pres, 402 pp.
Among
the gifts presented by the Indians in
southern California was the honeydew from reed grass (pp. 153, 219).
Brewer, W.H.
1930. Up and Down California in
1860-1864. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, p. 417. (Ephydridae)
Brooks, G.R.
1977. (See under J.S. Smith.)
Browne, J.R.
1865. Washoe Revisited. Notes on the Silver Regions of Nevada. Oakland, Calif.: Biobooks, pp. 111-114. (Also in Harpers' Monthly 31: 274-284; 411-419.) (Ephydridae)
Bryan, A.L. 1979.
Smith Creek Cave. In The
Archaeology of Smith Creek Canyon, Eastern Nevada (D.R. Tuohy; D.L. Rendall,
eds.), pp. 162-253. Anthropol. Papers
No. 17. Nev. St. Mus., Carson City. (Acrididae)
Bryant, E. 1967. What I Saw in California...in the Years 1846,
1847. Palo Alto, Calif.: Lewis Osborne, pp. 162-163, 168. (Acrididae)
Burgett, D.M.; Young, R.
1974. Lipid storage by honey ant
repletes. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am.
67: 743-744. (Formicidae)
Burgh, R.F.; Scoggin, C.R. 1948.
The Archaeology of Castle Park, Dinosaur National Monument. Appndix III, Univ. Colorado Studies, Ser. in
Anthropology No. 2. Boulder: Univ.
Colorado Press, pp. 94-99.
See
Jones, V.H. (1948) under Acrididae.
Bye, R.A., Jr.
1972. Ethnobotany of the Southern
Paiute Indians in the 1870's: with a
note on the early ethnobotanical contributions of Dr. Edward Palmer. In Great Basin Cultural Ecology: A Symposium (Fowler, D.D., ed.), pp.
87-104. Reno: Desert Res. Inst. Publs. Soc. Sci., No. 8. (Bruchidae, Aphididae).
Callaghan, Catherine A.
1978. Lake Miwok. In W.C. Sturtevant 1978, pp. 264-273.
The
Lake Miwok in California "considered roasted yellow jacket grubs a
delicacy, and grasshoppers were roasted and eaten" (p. 266).
Camp, C.L. 1923. The chronicles of George C. Yount. Calif. Hist. Quart. 2(1):
3-66.*
George
Yount noted (Camp, p. 39) that the Paiute in southwestern Utah ate
"grasshoppers and insects such as flies, spiders and worms of every
kind."
Carolin, V.M.; Knopf, J.A.E. 1968.
The pandora moth. U.S. Dept.
Agric. For. Surv. Pest Leafl. 114, pp. 1-7.
(Saturniidae)
Carr, L.G. 1951. Interesting animal foods, medicines and omens
of the eastern Indians, with comparisons to ancient European practices. J. Wash. Acad. Sci. 41: 229-235.
Carr
reports that Cherokees living in the shadows of the Great Smoky Mountains of
North Carolina have a high regard for a number of animal foods including
locusts, grubs and other insects. Lottie
Jenkins provided the information that grubworms were formerly employed and that
they can be made into a delicious thick soup:
"She told that her husband once sat down to a meal of grubworm
soup, but had no knowledge of what he was eating. He thought the soup very good until his
Indian host advised him to 'dig deep and get grubs.' When he pulled up a fat grub, the thought of
it was too much; he was unable to finish the meal." The cicada, Tibicen septendecim, also
was a "choice delicacy" among the Cherokee who dug them up just when
they were ready to emerge from the ground.
The legs were removed, then they were fried in hot fat. They were so highly prized that during years
of abundance they were salted down and pickled for canning. The Cherokee even made pies from them. Roasted cornworms were another insect
delicacy of the Cherokee.
"Young" wasps and yellowjackets [grubs] were also eaten.
Also
see under Hymenoptera: Cynipidae.
Chalfant, W.A.
1922 [1933]. The Story of
Inyo. Copyright W.A. Chalfant, pp.
80-84.
Chalfant's
discussion refers primarily to the Eastern Monos (Owens Valley Piutes) and to a
lesser extent to the Panamints which were desert Indians. Among the foods of the latter:
Sugar substitute was secured from a
common reed, either by scraping a parasitic covering from the stems and leaves
and using it in crude form, or by cutting the plants, drying them in the sun,
crushing the material and sifting out the finer product. This was ground into a gum-like mass and
partially roasted. White men who saw it
say that the crude sugar was filled with small green bugs, a detail not
objectionable to the aborginal user.
According
to Chalfant:
. . . animals of all edible kinds
and some insects helped the larder, and very little of each was wasted. . . . A
favorite food was a large caterpillar known as pe-ag-ge. This delicacy is the larva of the Pandora moth,
Coloradia pandora. The moth is
brownish gray, each wing bearing a small black spot. Its eggs are laid in early summer in tree
bark; while the yellow pine is sometimes used for the purpose, forest men who
have observed the point say that the Jeffrey pine is almost exclusively chosen,
usually in a stand of its own species and not in a mixed collection of
trees. Egg laying is on the sunny side
of the tree, or on the side away from prevailing winds. Hatching occurs in August or September. The young caterpillars feed on leaves, moving
upward until in October they gather in clusters like bees on the higher
branches. Remaining dormant during cold
weather, they continue to grow when spring comes, and move earthward. They are from 1 1/2 to 3 inches long, and
half an inch or more in diameter. When
not destined to become food for Indians, birds or animals, they reach the
ground, burrow into it and there produce hard cocoons, and in the second year
of the life cycle they become moths.
The Indians prepare to receive the
caterpillars by surrounding each tree with a trench ten to sixteen inches deep
and approximately two feet wide, with an almost vertical outer wall. The caterpillars collect in quantities and
are scooped up, a single camp sometimes gathering a ton or more. The harvest was sometimes hastened by
building a fire under the tree, the smoke causing the caterpilalrs to drop.
Fires were made and earth and
peagges mixed with the coals in a mound.
When the mass cooled off, the caterpillars were sifted out and stored in
cool places for later use. When not
eaten in this baked condition, they were mixed in stews and eaten with pinenuts
and sunflower seeds.