The Ruins in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, Called "Casa Blanca."
These were Once Connected.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers. U. S. Geol. Survey.
Besides the various game animals, and maize, beans, squash, grass seeds, pine nuts, cactus apples, wild potatoes, agave, and numerous palatable roots and berries, the dog was largely eaten. Some kinds of young dogs were said, when well cooked, to be much like pig, but the larger ones were apt to be coarse and rank. In addition to these numerous kinds of food, human flesh was occasionally eaten, but only when in the pangs of starvation: or as a religious ceremony. When no water was to be had, the plains tribes would kill a buffalo and drink the blood. They often also ate the entrails of animals raw, particularly those of the buffalo, which latter delicacy Harmon[25] indulged in and speaks of as "very palatable." All the Amerinds smoked, and with most tribes every consultation or council or friendly visit was opened by the tobacco pipe. Indeed the place of tobacco and the pipe among the natives of the continent was one of the greatest importance. It was not always what we call tobacco that was smoked, but frequently the inner bark of the red willow, the leaves of the manzanita bush, dog-wood bark and sumach leaves, or a plant resembling garden sage, which according to Beckwourth,[26] grew wild in the country of the Snakes, but which was cultivated by the Crows and several other tribes. Most of the Algonquian tribes grew large quantities of maize, and cooked it with beans and other things. From them, and their neighbours, we have derived not only a number of dishes, but their names as well, such as supawn, succotash, pone, mush, etc.
Old Mandan House.
From Wonderland, 1903—Northern Pacific Railway.
