Native History & Foodways

in the Brazos Valley and Vicinity:

Texas Master Naturalist, El Camino Real Chapter

Milano Methodist Church, May 10, 2018

Alston V. Thoms, Anthropology, TAMU

Feeding Families before HEB or Pot-Luck Arrived

Brazos County & the Post Oak Savannah, from San

Antonio to Tyler, are environmentally similar to the

oak-hickory-pine forests of eastern North America

and hence more like Atlanta, GA than Amarillo, TX

San

Antonio

Tyler

How to feed 30 this weekend, w/out HEB?

How to feed 30 this weekend, w/out HEB?

How to feed 30 this weekend, w/out HEB?

Paleo-Indian Period

prior to 10,000 years ago

Acutualistic experiment results:

27 students attending a field

school in South Africa, and

working in groups of 3-5, broke

these semi-fresh bones into small

pieces in 15 minutes

Field school and photographs by Dr. Lucinda Backwell, University of

the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2003

Mammoth bones, Duewall-Newberry site,

Brazos River, near College Station

Hunter-Gatherers-Fishers: Archaic Period: 10,000/8000 – 3500/1300 B.P.

People worked down food chain (to smaller terrestrial

animals, fish, & plants) for primary subsistence, exploiting

more comparatively high-cost foods

Hunter-Gatherers-Fishers of Late Pre-

Columbian period & early Post-Columbian (aka Late-“Prehistoric” or “Formative” in areas w/ agriculture)

ca. 2000/1300-150 B.P.

Introduction of bow & arrow; sometimes

pottery and/or agriculture into “Historic” era

Late Pre-Columbian groups were immediate

predecessors of historic-era “tribes”

Little, if any,

evidence for

pre-Columbian

agriculture

west of Trinity

River, as

agriculture

never

developed

there and H&G

lifeways

persisted into

Historic era

Agri-

culture

Hunting

&

Gathering

Agri-

culture

Agri-

culture

Agri-

culture Agri-

culture

Yegua Creek Archaeological Project

late 1600s

early 1700s

Yerpibame Payaya

Mixcal Xarame

Post Oak Savannah is food-rich with a comparative

abundance of deer and a variety of root food, as well

as nuts, fruits, and berries, and some fish

Cabeza de Vaca’s trek across S-C. North

America with two other Spaniards & Esteban,

an enslaved African, in the early 1530s

Cabeza de Vaca described Indians of the Post Oak

Savannah and vicinity as hunters & gatherers,

dependent on wild roots and deer (i.e., not practicing

any agriculture); bison were seldom encountered

Louis Berlandier

described & Sanchez y

Topia sketched (1828)

Caddo, Wichita,

Tonkawa, Comanche,

Apache in B/CS vicinity

Native American, Anglo- and African-Americans

encountered “native” Texas Indians everywhere

they attempted to settle

Native American Diversity in Brazos Valley

varied through time and across space

Yerpibame

Payaya

Cantonae

Mixcal

Xarame

Sijame

Tejas

Cocos

Meyeye

Jojuane

Tancague

Waco

Apache

Bedai

Kickapoo

Cherokee

Choctaw

Caddo

Cabeza de Vaca did not say just what kinds of roots

were most used by Indians in Post Oak Savannah, but

he did tell us that most roots were cooked in earth

ovens, some for only a few hours, others for 48 hrs.

E. camas (a lily) does not

grow densely in the Post

Oaks today, although it still

occurs densely (ca. 50/m2)

there as well as in

Blackland Prairie. It

likely grew densely in

pre-Columbian times

onions, lily family (Allium spp.)

false garlic (crow poison, Northoscordum bivalve)

Copper Lily (Habranthus texanus)

Wooly stargrass

(Hypoxis hirsuta)

Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) grows

widely and densely

bullbrier greenbrier (aka catbrier, Smilax bona-nox)

Winecup, mallow family (Callirhoe involucrata)

Thick-leaf yucca; Yucca treculeana

(formerly referred to as Yucca torreyi)

Prickly pear: tunas & nopalitos (Opuntia spp.)

Ethnographic Account:

C. Sternberg (1876)

witnessed/described a

Comanche family in

south-central OK (Cross

Timbers) cooking camas

in an earth oven

20 Hour Earth-Oven Baking

Native History and Foodways in the Post Oak

Savannah/Vicinity: Brazos Valley Perspective

Yerpibame Payaya

Mixcal Xarame