Besides laying in large stores of dried meats and fish, the natives gathered large quantities of wild berries, of which there were several varieties, and dried them for their winter supplies. There were many other kinds of food, such as the inner bark of the spruce tree, many kinds of roots, wild potatoes, wild onions, wild rice, sea-weed, fish, eggs or spawn, crab apples and nuts.
Methods of Cooking.
The people had three common ways of cooking their food: by boiling, steaming, and broiling before the fire.
To cook a quantity of provisions in one of their big tubs or boxes—for they had no pots in those days—they poured in water sufficient to cook the quantity needed, and then red hot stones, lifted with a pair of wooden tongs, were dropped in to make it boil. When salmon or other fish were to be cooked, they usually cut off the heads and tails, and kept up the boiling process until all was reduced to a broth, when it was ladled out into dishes or long troughs and set before the people. Think of seven hundred salmon cooked in this way for a single feast!
To prepare food by steaming, a large fire was first kindled on a bed of cobble stones. When the wood had burned out, the stones being very hot, layers of green grass or sea-weed were laid on the top of the stones and kept damp with water. The clams, mussels, or other shell fish—if salmon, cod, halibut or sturgeon, usually only the heads and tails were thus prepared—whatever they wished to cook, were placed upon the grass, a little water was poured upon the top, and the whole was closely covered with mats, leaves, or boughs to keep in the steam. This is much the best means of cooking clams or other shell fish. They are delicious when cooked after this fashion.
When it was desired to broil the salmon, birds, venison or other wild meats, a stick the size of a broom handle, about four feet long, was split part way down, and the meat or fish was put into the split, while little sticks were placed crossways to keep the food spread. The stick was then tied at the split end, while the other end, already sharpened, was driven into the ground by the hot camp-fire, the flat side being kept towards the fire. The oil or gravy was caught in a clam shell or other dish and poured back upon the meat while cooking. Salmon never tastes better than when cooked in this manner. Often when travelling by canoe have we had deer, bear or mountain-goat meat, ducks or geese, and even porcupine, eagle or gulls, cooked in this way. The latter is quite palatable when you are worn with travelling and the larder has become nearly exhausted.
Feasts.
It has been said, “It is always a feast or a famine with a native.”
Whether that is true or not, certain it is that the natives of the Pacific Coast have a great variety of feasts. Indians, wherever you find them, are very hospitable to strangers—the travellers and miners of this vast country would all testify to this. They are most generous, even reckless, with their food. If you are invited to a feast among them the food is piled up before you, and after having satisfied your appetite you are expected to take away all you cannot eat. If the visitor is a chief or important person, what he has left is sent home by messenger to his family. If he be any ordinary guest, he sweeps off what remains—which is usually much more than he has eaten—into a corner of his blanket or his shirt, and carries it away. If the feast be of whale’s blubber, porpoise, fish of similar kind, or venison, bear or mountain goat, it is cut up into slices and strung on a sharp stick, or carried in his hand to the rest of his family.
At a big feast there are always several masters of ceremonies and a number of waiters in attendance. These never sit down while the eating is going on, though often a feast will last for six or seven hours, having as many courses. There are numerous small, every-day feasts where neighbors call upon each other in a happy, social way.