Plains Indians Foodways

Overview of the Plains Indians

-Context and Heritage

Similar to the Inuit, the Plains Indians descended from ancestors who migrated across the Bering Strait into Alaska between 50,000 and 17,000 years ago. The Clovis people are the most recent ancestors of the Plains Indians, who migrated from Alaska, through Canada and into the United States, around 13,000 years ago. The Plains Indians do not represent a single tribe, like the Hadza, but represent a wide variety of indigenous people living in the central part of the United States and Canada, between the Mississippi river and the Rocky Mountains. While the tribes of Plains Indians differed somewhat, there were many similarities in the societies and foodways of the tribes. Plains Indians came into contact with Europeans relatively early in their history, around 1598, so their foodways were more strongly affected by European contact than the foodways of other indigenous groups, like the Inuit or Hadza. One of the major changes in Plains Indians foodways was a transition to reliance on agriculture for much of their food. In other books we’ll talk about the effects of agriculture on evolution and human health, but here we would like to focus on the Plains Indians’ ancient foodways, prior to agriculture. Despite changes in their foodways, Plains Indians’ knowledge of their own history, often from story-telling, tells us a lot about their ancient foodways, and we know that many aspects of their ancient foodways were present after the adoption of agriculture. Much of the data into Plains Indians’ pre-agricultural foodways also comes from archaeological data. This means that the Plains Indians’ foodways have not been observed by modern man; however, a combination of archaeological data, stories, and traditions passed down in Plains Indians’ tribes allows us to understand the ancient foodways of the Plains Indians.

-Overview of Lifestyle and Diet

Like other Paleolithic societies, the Plains Indians lived in small, familial tribes, where almost everyone was related genetically. Their tribes were at various points throughout history predominantly nomadic and other points focused more on gathering and cultivating foods. Their first major lifestyle shift occurred around 1000AD, when climate changes forced them to focus on farming. The second major shift occurred around the 1600s, when the introduction of the horse supported a shift back towards a more nomadic, hunting lifestyle. Overall, their culture was similar to that of most nomads in that they did not have a social hierarchy. The only time there was a social hierarchy was when they went on large summer hunts, at which point there was typically a leader of sorts to organize the hunters, women, and children.

The Plains Indians primarily ate animal foods, supplementing their diet with plant foods. For animal foods, they specialized in bison, hunting the large herds of bison that inhabited the

Great Plains of the United States and Canada. They secondarily hunted deer, antelope, and other small mammals and sometimes fished. Like other Paleolithic people, they used all parts of the animal. They preferred bison over other animals due to their size, meaning they provided greater amounts of calories and other nutrients than other animals related to the amount of effort required to kill them. Some of the Plains Indians ate fish and water fowl, in part because many villages were near rivers. This was particularly true during the spring time among Northern Plains Indians when salmon were swimming upstream to spawn. Plains Indians near the Great Lakes also fished often. Some Plains Tribes also ate insects, depending on where they lived and, often, during lean times.

For plant foods, the Plains Indians had a wide variety of plants available to eat, using more than 120 native prairie plants for foods. They gathered a lot of different foods, including roots, tubers, fruits, berries, fungi, algae, lichen, and nuts. As we already mentioned, the Plains Indians practiced agriculture for much of their history. They specialized in cultivating the three sisters: maize (Indian corn), beans, and squash, also cultivating melons and sunflowers (Sunflower oil was used for their hair-vanity really is part of humanity!). Though they practiced agriculture, it didn’t contribute much to their diets and likely just helped them survive changes in the availability of wild plants and bison. Also, despite having access to plant foods for more months of the year, plant foods did not grow in large quantities on the plains because the plains primarily consist of grasslands. So, the Plains Indians still relied predominantly on animal foods (the bison) for their nutritional needs.

The Plains Indians preferred bison over other animals because they have a lot more fat than deer, antelope, and other smaller mammals. Like other Paleolithic people, such as the Inuit, the Plains Indians sought fat as their preferred nutrient, over protein and carbohydrates. While there were a decent amount of carbohydrates available in the Plains, the carbohydrates weren’t sufficient to provide the energy these nomadic hunters needed, so they relied on the bison over everything else for their food and nutrition needs.

Most of the Plains Indians created homes that supported their nomadic lifestyle. Unlike the Inuit, the landscape didn’t provide ready-to-use building materials on a daily basis (like snow), so they created a home they could bring with them during their travels. This home was the tipi, a tent-like, cone-shaped structure made of poles covered with animal hides. Carrying the poles and animal hides with them while they traveled allowed them to quickly set up their homes at the end of each day. They used their intelligence to create homes that were adaptable to the wide range of temperatures in the plains. During the summer, the sides of the tipi could be rolled up for ventilation. During storms, the smoke hole in the center of the tipi could be closed to keep out the rain, and during the winter, the smoke hole was left open, allowing them to heat the tipi with a fire.

The wigwam (or wikiup) was another type of home very similar to the tipi. Plains Indians of the northeast lived in wigwams. Wigwams were circular in shape, made by driving saplings into the ground in a circular pattern and then bending the saplings towards one another, tying them together in the middle. These saplings were covered by mats made of woven rushes or bark. Just like the tipi, wigwams were easily transported and constructed, making them an ideal

home for the nomadic Plains Indians. When not following buffalo on long hunts, they made temporary winter villages. These villages were often in wooded areas to help provide shelter from winter storms.

Along with adapting their homes to the changing weather of the plains, they also adapted their clothing. During the warmer parts of the year, they wore clothing made from animal hides. Men wore a breech clout, leggings, and moccasins, and in the warmest weather, they left their upper body bare. Women wore dresses with leggings and moccasins. In the winter time, they wore robes, knee-length boots made from bison hide and lined with hair, and shirts made from animal skins. The northern-most Plains Indians also wore beaver caps and mittens.

While the Plains Indians were predominantly nomadic, adoption of agriculture, originally around 1000AD and then later in history, affected their lifestyles. Adoption of agriculture changed how they built their homes, with them favoring more permanent structures when they relied on agriculture over hunting. Greater reliance on agriculture also would have resulted in males in particular being more sedentary, as women were responsible for growing and harvesting food, as well as protecting crops from rabbits, deer, and other animals. Adoption of agriculture was also associated with declining nutrition and health status, as we’ll discuss later on.

-Sensing

The Plains Indians senses were the same as that of other humans, they had similar visual perceptions of the world and used their vision to help them hunt and gather food. Vision was particularly important on the prairie, as it allowed them to detect bison from a long way off, keeping them from scaring the bison by preventing them from getting too close. They combined their visual skills with their human intelligence to choose the best locations for hunting buffalo, for example, finding a cliff to drive the buffalo off. Their observational skills informed their agricultural techniques, with them using signs from nature to help guide their planting and harvesting; for example, planting corn when wild plums started blooming and returning home from the hunt to harvest corn around the time the goldenrod bloomed: “the sight of the goldenrod as it began to bloom caused them to say, ‘Now our corn is beginning to ripen at home’” (Gilmore, 1919)(p.109). They didn’t seem to use their hearing or their nose for finding food or prey. Rather, they used their hearing primarily for communicating with fellow Indians.

(One interesting distinction between the Plains Indians and other Paleolithic people is that they used their verbal skills for hunting, specifically to scare the buffalo by yelling. Other Paleolithic people do not appear to have employed their vocal skills for the purposes of hunting. Though vocalization, per se, is not a sense.)

DO YOU RECALL ANY INFORMATION ABOUT HOW THEY WOULD FIND THE BISON?

SCOUTS? SMOKE SIGNALS? WHAT?-See new notes below.

The Plains Indians patterned their own movements and migrations based on the bison. So, they followed the herds’ general migratory patterns, helping them find large gatherings when the small herds came together in early summer due to the abundance of fresh grass. They ensured

fresh grass by burning large swaths of the plains in the fall and spring. They knew the bison preferred the greener, more nutritious grass growing in the freshly burned areas, so they effectively set-up a grazing location for the bison, attracting them to the location and then hunting them. Group hunts began after scouts located herds and notified the chief of their location. The scouts continued following the bison while the rest of the tribe processed forward for group hunts.

-Locomotion

The Plains Indians lived in an environment dominated by large, grassy swaths of land, with some rivers and streams. Their survival depended on following the herds of buffalo roaming the prairies. When many of us think of Plains Indians we think of horses, but the Plains Indians didn’t start using horses until the 1600s, after the Spanish brought horses to North America. Before horses, Plains Indians travelled and hunted on foot and used dogs. Dogs were important because they hauled supplies, like tipis (or wigwams). The dogs used a special carrier called the travois to haul large loads across the plains. They used the same material to build the travois as they used for the tipi: wooden poles and buffalo hide and sinew. The travois had an A-shaped frame made of wooden poles (the same poles used for tipis) and cross bars tied together with buffalo sinew and it was attached to the dog with a leather harness. It allowed dogs to carry 60 pound loads across the prairie. The only challenge was dogs overheating easily when hauling heavy loads, meaning they couldn’t work for very long on hot, summer days.

In the water, the Plains Indians used two types of vessels, canoes and bull-boats. Their canoes were quite similar to ones we use today. The bull-boat was a circular boat made from bent willow branches and covered with water-tight bison hides. The rivers in the plains were dry for a large amount of the year, so they didn’t use boats for transportation as often as they used dogs.

Luke-Should there be more here on the types of communities? I do not think that settled village communities were as common during the Paleoindian times and believe they only came into regular use with the adoption of agriculture. Maybe I incorporate that into the brief summary of changes to Indian life after the adoption of the horse and the adoption of agriculture. There is an interesting back-and-forth in the Plains Indians’ history where, originally they were nomadic hunters without agriculture, then, still pre-horse, they had agriculture, after the horse, they became more nomadic.

OVERALL, REMEMBER THAT WE ARE FOCUSED ON THEIR LIFESTYLE AS FORAGERS, PREHORSE AND PREAGRICULTURE. DURING THAT TIME, IT SOUNDS LIKE THEY WERE NOMADIC, FOLLOWING THE HERDS. BUT I WOULD IMAGINE THEY SETTLED IN THE WINTER.-Yes, they did appear to settle in the winter, but still in their tipis as far as I can tell.

SO IN SHORT, FOCUSE ON THEIR LIFESTYLE AS FORAGERS--BUT MENTION THE PATTERNS; THAT AGRICULTURE CAUSED SEDENTISM.-Okay, thanks, I was

thinking I should focus on their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but wanted to confirm. The agriculture caused temporary times where they weren’t nomadic; however, it’s not clear that they were sedentary, at least the women and children weren’t, because they were busy harvesting. Though, in the winter they would have been sedentary. Men were more sedentary as a result of agriculture though. This may be another reason why men ended up conducting more warfare... I added this information above under the overview of lifestyle and diet-it’s the last paragraph.

I ALSO THINK ITS MOST INTERESTING THAT, AFTER AGRICULTURE, THEY DECIDED TO RETURN TO FORAGING--SHOWING PERHAPS SOME INNATE PREFERENCE FOR ANIMAL FOODS OR THAT LIFESTYLE?-From what I read, it sounds like they hunted again because it provided more overall food, calories, and nutrition. They just needed there to be sufficient animals to support hunting. I’m not sure if it was preference for the lifestyle of hunting, I’m guessing it has more to do with the desirability of having a more caloric and nutrient-dense food source, but that’s just a supposition.

The Plains Indians’ nomadic way of life meant they did not believe in land ownership and, therefore, didn’t need to protect their territory. As such, the ancient Paleoindians did not have to engage in war to protect land or food. However, after the adoption of the horse, intertribal war increased significantly because hunting territories increased, meaning that the tribes came into contact with each other more and then fought over hunting territories. Also, the adoption of the horse meant men had more time to conduct war and horses were highly valued as a status symbol, so Indians fought over horses.

GENERALLY, THE RULE HERE IS THAT ALL PRIMATES PROTECT THEIR TERRITORY AS NEEDED.

GENERALLY, TERRITORIES THAT ARE SMALLER BUT HIGHER IN NUTRIENTS ARE PROTECTED.

LARGER TERRITORES, WITH MORE SCATTERED NUTRIENTS, LESS PROTECTED--BECAUSE ITS MORE DIFFICULT TO DO SO.

HUMANS FOLLOW THIS SAME PATTERN.

-Capture

Since the Plains Indians did not have morphological adaptations to hunting their food, we can conclude that they adapted through cultural evolution-through using their intelligence to create tools and strategies for hunting animals. They almost always worked together to hunt bison. For example, they used the common hunting method, used by other humans and our ancestors in Pleistocene, of stampeding a whole herd of bison of the edge of a cliff where they could be slaughtered. This was also called a buffalo jump. One particularly brave man would dress up like a buffalo calf and approach the herd while mimicking the distress calls of a calf. Other men dressed as wolves and appeared behind the herd, making the bison think they were in danger. The combination of the man dressed up like a calf and the men dressed as wolves helped

lead the herd towards the kill site. Other times they used tactics similar to most humans-the foot surround: surrounding animals in a circle, slowly closing in, trapping, and killing them. They used a similar method to the foot surround, called the pis kin (“deep blood kettle” or impounding), where they drove the herd of bison into a man-made funnel, trapping them in the narrow tip of the funnel, and butchering the bison there. They killed the entire herd, which could be 300-600 animals.

Other less common hunting methods included camouflaging themselves in animal skins and then stalking animals or ambushing them at water holes. In the winter time, the bison became mired down in snow drifts and men could simply walk up to them, killing the bison with arrows or a lance. In the summer, they sometimes killed bison while they swam in rivers. This was very dangerous, but men would swim alongside the bison or get on top of the bison and then cut its throat.

While the slaughter of entire herds seems wasteful and cruel, this practice was rooted in the belief that, unless all the bison were killed, a surviving bison would warn nearby herds of the Indians’ presence, ruining their chances at killing more bison. Despite the callousness of their hunting practices, the Plains Indians loved and honored the bison and believed that all animal and plants have a conscious life. The bison in particular were incredibly important to the Plains Indians: “Probably no animal anywhere affected any people to the degree that bison affected people of the plains.” “To us, the buffalo was more than an animal. It was the stuff of life.”-First Boy, an Assinboin. This apparent contradiction between their reverence for the bison and the wholesale slaughter of entire herds may best be explained by the unique beliefs of Plains Indians. However, their behavior didn’t contrast with other groups, like the Inuit and Hadza, who typically only killed enough animals for survival. Unfortunately, an adequate explanation for these differences may never be available to us. (Just my interpretation-it really doesn’t make sense for them to kill all of the bison if they need them for survival and seems to directly contradict their reverence/respect for the conscious nature of all animals and plants, not sure how to explain this adequately)

SOUNDS STRANGE. BUT EVEN FORAGERS ARE KNOWN TO DECIMATE LARGE GAME IN THEIR TERRITORIES TO THE POINT OF EXTINCTION.-Yeah, this issue of them killing a ton of bison simultaneously is mentioned in most of the sources I read, though I did find one contradictory source, the rest point to this being the case when they had large group hunts.

The Plains Indians who fished had a couple of different methods, the most common of which was to use spears to stab the fish. They fished with spears throughout the year, cutting holes in the ice during the winter and spearing the fish through the holes. They used three-pronged spears for smaller fish. They also used nets made from vines to capture fish, or fish hooks made from bone. They placed nets across streams, anchoring them into the sand using poles. The nets extended above the water like a fence and were effectively designed for impounded the fish when they swam into the net. The Blackfoot used a method similar to

impounding bison where they made basket traps to capture fish. The basket traps were shaped like a funnel, with the large opening of the trap upstream and the closure of the funnel downstream. When the fish swam into the funnel, they would get stuck in the end of the funnel by the power of the current. Then they could remove the funnel from the water, bringing all of the fish with them. Another ingenious method they used was stunning the fish by putting round black walnut hulls into pools, which made the fish float the surface, where they were easy to capture. When fishing for catfish, they used a fishing method known today as ‘noodlin’, where a man wrapped his hand with a cloth and put it in a catfish hole underwater. Once the catfish tried to swallow his hand, the man pulled the catfish out of the stream.

The Plains Indians who ate insects used capture methods like those used for capturing bison. For example, one way of capturing grasshoppers was digging a hole that was 10-12 feet wide and 4-5 feet deep. Then, the men encircled the hole. They worked together beating the ground and scaring the insects, making them jump forward, chasing them until they jumped into the hole. A similar method was to dig a hole in a meadow and set fire to the grass around the pit, driving the insects into the pit. The fire burned the insect wings so that they couldn’t fly away. This method was used for grasshoppers and locusts. When gathering worms, they simply pulled them off plants during the rainy season or, in the case of the pupae of read flies, called kutsavi, they gathered them when they washed up on the beach by waves.

-Gathering Plants

The Plains Indians women gathered foods similar to other humans, like using fire-hardened digging sticks for retrieving tubers and roots. Like the Inuit, they also stole food, particularly ground beans, from rodent dens. They also showed compassion for the animal from whom they stole food by leaving other food in exchange: “They said it would be wicked to steal from the animals, but they thought that a fair exchange was not robbery”. They often re-routed their hunting travels to include areas where women knew they could find particular foods, like tubers or berries, and would sometime travel far out of their way to gather highly valued foods, like chokecherries. They also gathered other foods, like fungi, algae, lichen, fruits, and nuts.

-Cultivating Plants

The Plains Indians were unique from other groups we’ve talked about, like the Inuit and Hadza, in that they participated in agriculture for much of their history. They used agriculture as early as 800AD, and by the 1200s, most of the Plains Indians farmed for survival, only hunting sporadically. Like gathering food, women were responsible for cultivating foods. They didn’t have very well-developed horticultural practices, but they did certain things, like leaving fields fallow or burning trees and brush on them, which likely increased their agricultural success. Women planted many varieties of corn, growing them in separate plots to keep the individual varieties pure, and planting beans in the hills between corn rows. Corn was a dietary staple, so they used most fields to grow corn, providing less space for other foods. Squash and pumpkins were planted in their own plots to help them thrive. Like corn, they had many varieties of beans, squash, and pumpkins.

-Storage and Refinement

The Plains Indians boiled much of their food in skin containers or earthenware pots. Another boiling method involved digging a hole in the ground, lining it with a skin container, filling it with water and red-hot rocks, and then submerging food stored in skin containers. Women also roasted foods over the fire, broiled food on the coals, or baked food underground. Drying was the most common way of preserving food. Below are examples of the refinement, storage, and processing of their food.

-Bison

Mass bison hunts happened during the summer and fall, while smaller, selective hunting happened during the winter and spring. Immediately after the hunt, Indian families gathered around their hunter’s kills and drank the warm blood. They removed the tongues and ate them immediately and also ate other organ meat raw while butchering the animal. The bison’s heart was considered a symbol of the animal’s strength and bravery. Another raw food was a combination of raw brains and bone marrow that were stirred together in a section of ribs used as a bowl. They considered fresh liver sprinkled with the bile from the gall bladder a delicacy. They also ate the curdled milk from the stomach of bison calves.

They rendered buffalo fat with the inner bark of red elm trees to improve the flavor, maintain the quality of the tallow, and keep it from going rancid. The tallow around the kidney and loin were particularly valued. They also used bone marrow fat by splitting the bones and pounding them with a stone hammer. They then boiled the bones, causing the marrow to rise to the top. This marrow was skimmed of and eaten with dried meat. Another common food was a soup made of roasted bison hump with hooves, tails, and pemmican. Fresh buffalo meat lasted for up to one month, but they killed so many bison in one hunt, that much of the meat had to be preserved. (In fact, Paleoindian hunters killed enough bison on one hunt to have 56,640 pounds of meat, 4,000 pounds of internal organs, and 5,400 pounds of fat.) They used a hammer made of a bison leg bone with the hoof still attached to it, stone scrapers, and knives for butchering the bison and processing the skin at the kill site. Much of the meat was preserved. Preservation methods included putting meat into cold storage, drying it, or making pemmican. Some areas of the plains, like modern-day southeastern Idaho, had lava tube caves that maintained a temperature of 34 degrees or lower throughout the year. These pre-historic freezers allowed Indians to store frozen bison meat year-round. When they needed meat, they used tines made of elk antlers or stone hammers to extract the frozen bison meat. When drying food, women made jerky by cutting the bison meat in thin strips across the grain and drying it on racks in the sun. Some jerky was stored as is; however, a very common way to preserve meat was pemmican. Women pounded jerky meat and mixed it with bone marrow, melted fat, suet, crushed berries, and nuts. They put the mix into skin bags, paunches or large intestines sealed with melted tallow. The melted tallow made the container airtight and the pemmican would keep for years.

Pemmican Recipe: Modern Day version-Notes on likely differences in Paleoindian food preparation

PEMMICAN (By Patricia Rowland)

• Dried meat (buffalo, game or beef) (just buffalo in Paleoindian version) • Dried chokecherries (juneberries can be used as well) (use about the same amount as the

dried meat) • Nuts sometimes added as well • Sugar to taste (not in Paleoindian version) • Lard (to hold together) Do not use shortening or butter. (Buffalo tallow in Paleoindian

version) Pound meat very thin and dry in the oven. Grind the dried meat in a food processor. (Originally pounded and mixed by hand.) Add the chokecherries and blend together. The consistency should be dry and loose with fruit broken up. Add melted lard slowly while mixing. Two tablespoons of fat are used for each 4-5 ounces of meat plus 1/3 cup of fruit. Fat changes the consistency and makes it appear semi-moist instead of dry and improves the flavor and texture. Store in paper bags. (Paleoindians would have stored this in skin bags or large intestines.)

Osage Strip Meat Soup By Andrea Hunter, Osage Tribal Historic Preservation Officer

Photo by D. Mihesuah

Ingredients: 3 or 4 pounds of buffalo meat, preferably from rump. Take the buffalo meat and following the grain, cut into strips about as thick as one’s thumb and about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long. Wash meat. Put in kettle and cover with cold water, no more than 1 inch over the meat. Take a ladle and mash the meat. Put on fire to boil. Boil about 45 minutes to 1 hour with no lid. Serves 12 or so.

-Fish

Similar to other meats, fish were often preserved by smoking them over coals by hanging them on lines or arranging them on racks inn a smoke shed or tipi, for several hours or up to three days. Large, fatty fish like salmon were cut into strips before smoking them. They typically ate fish by skewering them and cooking them over the fire. Another common way of eating fish

was to add them to soups or stews and serving the stew with corn mush. Fish stew with corn mush was often fed to sick people because it was easy for them to digest.

(Park et al. have the following information on fish, though this seems to be post-contact as far as I can tell: Occasionally, they cleaned and salted the fish fillets, letting them stand overnight. Then, they’d string the fish on a stick and roast them over a fire. This is the only evidence we have of the Plains Indians using salt!)

-Insects

Similar to other foods, drying was a common form of preserving insects. They dried whole grasshoppers and locusts, worm skins, and kutsabi, storing them for later consumption. Insects like grasshoppers and crickets were often crushed and made into a paste that was dried in the sun or near the fire. This dried paste could then be stored for later use. They had several ways of preparing insects for consumption. For example, grasshoppers were eaten in soup or boiled. Another way they prepared grasshoppers was en appalas, which involved stringing large grasshoppers on rods and putting the rods near the fire, where they roasted. Previously dried grasshoppers, locusts, and worm skins were eaten as is, though they sometimes lightly roasted dried grasshoppers. Pulverized grasshoppers were also mixed with service berries and/or wild currants and then dried in the sun into a type of dessert similar to a fruitcake. In a similar fashion, dried kutsavi were mixed with berries, acorns, and other plant foods into a bread-like food called cuchaba. These worms were also eaten by frying them in their own fat. In the Southwest, the Pima Indians pulled the heads off worms and removed their intestines, and boiled them.

-Tubers and Roots

Tubers were often eaten peeled and fresh and tasted like beans. Tubers and roots were also roasted on hot coals or baked under coals. They liked boiling tubers or roots with meat in soups and stews. Plants that weren’t immediately eaten fresh or roasted were dried and stored for winter. Women peeled prairie turnips and braided the stems together prior to drying them on racks. They stored dried prairie turnips in skin bags, which lasted for years. Prior to eating them, the prairie turnips were rehydrated by simmering them overnight. Dried prairie turnips were often ground into a powder and used to thicken soups or as flour for making bread.

Camas roots were eaten by roasting or boiling and had the flavor of roasted chestnuts or baked pear. Camas roots were preserved by first cooking them underground in an oven consisting of several alternating layers of embers, earth, stones, and roots, all topped with a final layer of earth and then wood, which burned from 30 to 70 hours. Cooking the camas root this way gave it the consistency of a date. This date-like product was preserved as is or made into loaves. These roasted camas roots were often used as a sweetener to enhance the flavor of other foods.

-Fruits and Berries

Plains Indians often ate berries and fruits fresh or cooked down into a sauce (wild plums were particularly highly valued in this form). Berries and cherries (like the chokecherry) were also used in soups, stews, or mixed with pemmican. Fruits used in pemmican were pounded on a

flat stone without removing the pits, and the whole mixture was added to pemmican. A favorite desert was a soup made from buffalo fat and berries mixed with buffalo blood. They also tapped wild grapevines in the spring and drank the sap, which tasted like grape juice. Those who lived in areas with cacti ate prickly pears raw, stewed, or roasted. Almost all varieties of berries, cherries, plums, and prickly pear fruit were also dried and put into winter storage when they weren’t eaten immediately.

DRIED BERRIES (Traditional Northern Cheyenne berries such as chokecherries, buffalo berries or wild blueberries)

1. After picking the berries, put them, including the seeds, in a blender or food processor and blend/process into a pulp. (Traditionally, the berries were pounded, including the seeds, to a pulp with a formed rock).

2. Form the pulp into patties, cover them with cheesecloth and lay them out to dry, turning occasionally. (Traditionally, they were dried in the sun).

*This process takes about two days. The patties may be stored in a tightly covered container for future use and can be used to make berry sauce.

WOJAPI (DAKOTA BERRY SAUCE)

Makes about 4 cups

• 4 cups blueberries or chokecherries, fresh or frozen • 1-2 tablespoons cornstarch or arrowroot (Traditionally would have been arrowroot) • Maple syrup (May have used some syrup, depending on time period) • ¼ cup water

In a saucepan, simmer berries and water over low heat, stirring occasionally. (If using fresh berries, you may need more water to keep them from scorching.) Once the berries are broken down into a sauce, spoon out some sauce and whisk in the thickener. Fresh berries should need 1 tablespoon, frozen might need 2 tablespoons thickener. Whisk until completely dissolved, then add back to the rest of the sauce. Sweeten to taste with maple syrup. Serve on cornbread or ice cream.

-Other foods

The Plains Indians women used many plant foods as flavor agents, often adding them to soups or pemmican. Wild onions and nodding onions were eaten raw and fresh as a relish, cooked to flavor meat or soup, or fried. Mint leaves flavored pemmican or meat, and nuts and other gathered foods were also added to pemmican for flavor. Nuts were also eaten raw, served with honey, or made into soup. Wild flax seeds were specifically added to foods because of their

flavor and their high nutritional value. Many fungi were boiled instead of eating them raw and were typically mild in flavor. Some tribes also consumed the inner bark of saplings.

-Corn and Squash

The Plains Indians harvested corn twice throughout the growing season and their food preparation and preservation methods varied depending on when the corn was harvested. The first harvest was in August, with the corn was still green. This corn was often eaten roasted or boiled. When green corn wasn’t immediately eaten, they removed the kernels from the cob and dried them in the sun before storing them in bags for the winter. Another storage method was to dig holes 2-3 feet wide and 8 feet deep, where they would store the corn and sometimes other foods, like squash. They covered the opening with layers of grass, skins, earth, and ash. The second corn harvest was in September, when the corn had ripened. This ripe corn was often pounded into cornmeal, parched, or made into hominy. Corn silks were also dried and ground with parched corn to make it sweet. They often soaked ripened corn in lye made from ashes, which, while they probably didn’t realize this, soaking corn in lye increased the bioavailability of the protein, niacin, calcium, and phosphorus in the corn. Much of the ripened corn harvested in September was specifically for winter. This corn was shucked, dried, shelled, and put into storage caches for the winter.

Squash were prepared by boiling them whole in water or roasting them under the ashes of the fire. Squash not eaten fresh were sliced and hung on long poles to dry. The dried squash were stored in caches for winter use.

THREE SISTERS SOUP (From Donna LaChapelle and Patricia Chandler)

Makes 4 servings

• 3 tablespoons butter (bison tallow) • 4 cups chicken or vegetable stock (possibly bison hoof broth) • 1 cup onion, diced • 1 clove garlic, minced • 1 butternut or acorn squash, pre-baked and pureed (Not pureed) • 1 teaspoon curry powder • ½ teaspoon salt (Not traditionally) • ½ cup yellow corn kernels • ¼ teaspoon ground coriander • ½ cup hominy, cooked • 1 cup white beans, cooked • 1⁄8 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic, cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until tender. Stir in spices, cook for 1 minute. Add stock, corn, hominy, and beans, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15-20 minutes to develop flavors. Stir in pureed squash, cook for 5 minutes or until heated through. Serve warm with chives and plain yogurt as a garnish. (There may have been fewer spices originally, though they did use a lot of different plants, so it’s possible there were spices.)

Sharing, Culture, Division of Labor

Similar to other indigenous cultures, the Plains Indians did not have a set meal time. Rather, they always had some meat or a meal on the fire. They had what was called ‘The Eternal Cooking Meal’, which was a container of stew kept full at all times and kept warm with hot stones. Anyone could eat when they were hungry and were obliged to help keep the container full by replacing pieces of meat with more meat, and keeping a sufficient amount of water in the stew. It was the duty of tribes and families to keep the eternal meal cooking, regardless of whether or not there were food shortages. Additionally, they believed in sharing and, when guests arrived, the common greeting was “Have you eaten?”, reflecting their desire to be hospitable and always to feed their guests.

In general, the Plains Indians valued individual competency and honoring obligations to the community. For example, generosity to the poor, sharing with relatives, and being hospitable and cooperative were valued and raised the status of the individual or family. The Plains Indians believed in brotherhood and shared resources, including food. Indeed, there wasn’t any particular time for meals and they typically had some meat on the fire at all times throughout the day. Since women and children followed the hunt, they had equal access to fresh bison with the men and there were not any particular foods eaten by men versus women or children. Women were responsible for distributing the food cultivated in their plots. The Plains Indians collectively engaged in foodways. Men were responsible for hunting to provide meat for their entire household, and the women were responsible for gathering and cultivating plant foods, gathering firewood, refining, and storing food.

Like other Paleolithic societies, the Plains Indians divided labor mostly based on sex. Men’s greater physical strength and aggression made them well-suited to hunting and making weapons: spears, bows, arrows, knifes, and so forth. Men also protected the entire community by engaging in offensive or defensive warfare when necessary and oversaw all political and religious activities. Women’s traditional roles, in addition to gathering, cultivating, and preparing food, including making clothing and household items and bearing and rearing children. Women’s roles involved a substantial amount of hard work, while men’s roles required considerable risks to life and limb. Men and women recognized the reciprocity of their roles and considered each other’s roles equally essential, and equally essential to each other. As such, the sexual division of labor persisted because it maintained tight family and tribal bonds and it helped them survive. Without this interdependence on one another, the economy of their foodways would have failed, resulting in starvation and the extinction of their family lines. As such, we shouldn’t be surprised that they appreciated the mutually-beneficial roles of men and women.

This appreciation for the important roles of men and women was evident in their child-rearing practices. Similar to other Paleolithic societies, infants were kept close to their mothers, who often breastfed for at least two, and up to five or six years. The Plains Indians loved children and loudly celebrated birth, particularly that of male children. Sexual divisions began early in life, with girls being given dolls to play with early on, and later, child-sized hide-scraping and other tools to help them learn the skills they would need for active participation tribal life. Boys were given bows and arrows with dull tips, having shooting matches with one another and learning how to stalk game and hunt moving targets. The Plains Indians valued children learning life skills strongly, publicly recognizing and praising children when they successfully completed a task.

Family life among the Plains Indians included practices we might consider strange. For example, men were not supposed to look at or talk to their mother-in-law, and vice-versa. There were very strong taboos against this behavior and only in instances of extreme danger were they able to interact with one another. When the danger passed, the taboo was reinstated. Often the only way to break the taboo was for the man and his mother-in-law to exchange gifts several times, eventually breaking the taboo. Despite this strange custom, the overall family life was quite similar to how we live in our families today. While divorce did occur, it was uncommon and considered shameful. Overall, the Plains Indians seemed to live well in communion with one another.

An interesting cultural practice among the Plains Indians that distinguishes them from traditional societies, and or our society, was the presence of berdaches. Berdaches were Indians without a sex classification, they were neither men nor women. Rather, they represented a third gender role that combined traits unique to men and women. Male berdaches had relationships with non-berdache men, did women’s work, and cross-dressed or combined male and female clothing. Individuals became berdaches because they preferred the work of the other sex and/or had specific dreams or visions. Berdaches had distinct religious roles and were often healers or had the ability to predict the future or give people luck. While we might be tempted to rationalize the presence of berdaches based on our own experiences, perhaps by labeling them as transgender or transvestites, berdaches were neither of these things. Rather, they inhabited a unique and revered cultural space not seen in many societies.

Trade

The Plains Indians have traded for centuries, long before the arrival of Europeans. Trade began before 2000 BC and included trade within tribes, between tribes, and, later, with Europeans. Trade within tribes focused on obtaining social status or needed items. Trade between tribes focused on exchanging items from the hunt, like dried meat, tallow, or skins, for agricultural products like corn, squash, and beans. The necessity of trade systems is clear from the fact that, from AD 1400 to 1500 there was a trade network called the Middle Missouri system, including a formal annual rendezvous on the James River in South Dakota. Such trade fairs were common and were typically located in a place that was mutually convenient for the various tribes.

The Plains Indians engaged in several interesting trade practices, which at first we might find odd. For instance, all trade included middlemen to serve as intermediaries between different tribes and they often used a ceremony, called the calumet ceremony, that temporarily made unrelated people ‘one family’, allowing traditional enemies to trade with one another. Additionally, they sometimes traded corn for corn or meat for meat. While this appears pointless on the surface, the purpose of this redundant trading was to maintain trade avenues in case of crop failure. Finally, Native American sign language was often a necessary component of trade because it allowed linguistically diverse tribes to negotiate trades. Overall, the Plains Indians trade practices enhanced their foodways, allowing them to access food that might otherwise have been difficult for them to obtain, and helping them survive.

Spirituality

The vastness of the geography of the Great Plains inspired much of the Plains Indians’ religious beliefs, and they found the plains both enchanting and mysterious: “The country was very beautiful…in both the woodland and the prairie I could see… many forms of life, beautiful living creatures which Wakanda [the Holy One Above] had placed here”- Omaha Indian (Carlson)(p.111). They viewed the Great Plains in the way we might think of Mother Earth, providing for their needs and livelihood. They believed that a conscious life existed in all animal and plant beings and in the interconnectedness of all phenomena. They did not have the concept of private ownership, and they saw little need to save food or material goods for the future, as such, these goods were to be shared, not hoarded. Time was of minor concern. “Hours, minutes, and seconds were such small divisions of time, that we had never thought of them. When the sun rose, when it was high in the sky, and when it set were all the divisions of the day that we had ever found necessary”- Carl Sweezy, an Arapaho (Carlson p. 111). “Nature dictated the time to hunt, the time to plant, the time to pick berries.”

The Plains Indians differed in their religious beliefs and did not share any one epistemology, ontology, or phenomenology. “They admired bravery, fortitude, wisdom, and generosity, as well as honesty, loyalty, and courtesy” (Carlson p.111). They did not separate the secular and sacred life and transformed daily tasks into rituals. Their main goal in life was to “become one with the spirit world”. Many Plains Indians recognized an omniscient, all-powerful principal spirit being, known as the Holy One Above, who was the creator that gave sacred power to all elements of life (Carlson).

Religion was primarily individualistic and focused on personal visions. Common religious practices included using sweat lodges for purification, reverential pipe smoking, symbolic painting of the face and body, and music and dancing. “For all Plains Indians, the cardinal points of the compass, the number four, and circle or hoop were sacred”. The circle symbolized harmony. They pitched their tipis in circles and sat in circles during ceremonies. Medicine wheels were ceremonial sites made of stones placed in a circle. Like the circle, the number four symbolized natural harmony because there were four seasons, four ages in human life (babyhood, childhood, adulthood, and old age), four elements above the earth (sun, moon, stars, sky), and the four directions of the compass (Carlson).

Ceremonial use of sweat lodges involved people smoking, praying, and trying to receive visions. Tobacco smoking was a widely-practiced ritual, predominantly among males. They made a special concoction known as Kinnikinnick, which had tobacco, dried red willow bark, bearberry and sumac leaves, cottonwood, and other aromatic herbs, like marijuana. Kinnikinnick was stored in small, elaborately decorated pouches. The personal-vision quest was a nearly universal religious element among nomadic tribes. The goal of the quest was to obtain a vision and to befriend a spirit animal. People fasted and thirsted for 3-4 days until they had a revelation in the form of a dream or trance. Common spirits, which became the person’s guardian spirit, were bison, elk, bear, eagles, hawks, dogs, and rabbits (Carlson)(pp.115-117).

One tribe, the Skidi Pawnee, practiced human sacrifice in their ceremonies well into the nineteenth century. Other Pawnee tribes disapproved of the practice. The Skidi captured a 13-year-old girl and had a four-day ceremony, at the end of which the girl stood on a special platform, faced the morning star (a bright planet like Venus or Mars), and was shot through the breast with an arrow. A priest cut out her breast and smeared her blood over his face and body, with the rest of the community continuing to shoot the corpse (Carlson p.119).

The well-known Sun Dance ceremony wasn’t developed until after 1700, likely by the Arapaho or the Cheyennes, and its use spread rapidly after 1750, being used by almost all tribes. In general, the goal of the Sun Dance was to bring good health, fertility, and sustenance, and to restore tribal harmony and renew the world. “Men… danced for from one to four days and nights to the accompaniment of drumming and singing. The dancers often underwent various ritualistic self-sacrifices, including fasting, thirsting, and mutilations, in their quest for power, good health, thanksgiving, success, and general welfare” (Carlson p.120). Among the Lakota, two delicacies were consumed through the Sun Dance ceremony- dog meat and bison tongue. The Lakota’s Sun Dance ritual was masochistic in their practice of placing wooden skewer through the flesh of volunteers’ backs, breasts, and legs, whose goal it was to break free of the skewers by tearing their flesh. The Sun Dance was a highly unifying ritual: “they came together at one time during the year for a deeply emotional religious experience in which supernatural aid was called upon to assure the tribe a plentiful supply of bison for the coming year” (Carlson p.122).

The bison was incredibly important to the Plains Indians: “Probably no animal anywhere affected any people to the degree that bison affected people of the plains.” “To us, the buffalo was more than an animal. It was the stuff of life.”-First Boy, an Assinboin. They had legends about bison herds and believed the bison was a spiritual force in their world. Folklore among some tribes held that all the bison in a herd must be slaughtered so that an escaping bison couldn’t warn nearby herds. Raw bison heart symbolized the animal’s bravery and strength (Carlson, 1998)(pp. 39-40 & p.56).

Digestion and Ingestion

The Plains Indians do not have any unique adaptations beyond other humans for the digestion or ingestion of their food. However, they do have interesting wear patterns compared to other groups in that they have an even amount of wear on both sides of their mouth. This is quite

odd, as most humans have greater wear on the dominant side of their mouths. It is unclear whether these wear patterns are related to diet or other practices. We may be surprised to hear that the Plains Indians practiced dental hygiene by chewing sticks made of black sampson roots, which are a mild anesthetic and have antibiotic and anti-inflammatory effects. Indeed, the use of chewing sticks can reduce the risk for cavities; however, their dental hygiene was not very advanced, and they often used chewing sticks for therapeutic, not preventive, purposes. This use of plants for therapy shouldn’t surprise us overall, as the Plains Indians have a particularly rich history of using plants for medicinal purposes. In fact, they used plants for medicinal purposes more often than they used them for food!

Macronutrients

We believe the Plains Indians’ diet consisted about 21% calories from protein, 58% calories from fat, and 22% calories from carbohydrates; however, these percentages likely varied between tribes and by season. For example, during the winter and early spring, the bison were likely leaner, meaning that the percent of calories from protein would have been higher and that from fat would have been lower.

I FIND THIS QUESTIONABLE. WE THEORIZED THAT THE INUIT EAT ADDITIONAL PROTEIN TO SYNTHESIZE INTO GLUCOSE. -This was incredibly difficult to nail down and would be worth discussing. I looked at a lot of different sources and couldn’t get a clear idea of the proportion of calories from each macronutrient in the Plains Indians’ diet. The above numbers are what I think is the case for those Indians, like the Blackfoot, who predominantly relied on bison for their animal source of food and engaged in minimal agriculture. However, there was great variation between tribes in reliance on agriculture and in the addition of other animal food sources, like fish. Cordain’s 2000 article suggests that Plains Indians depended on plant foods for 26-35% of their subsistence, hunted animal foods for 56-65%, and fishing for 6-15% of their subsistence. Of course, this still doesn’t directly answer the question of the macronutrient breakdown. Table 4 in his paper may be helpful, but still requires a lot of judgment calls…

YET THE PLAINS INDIANS DO NO.

SO HOW DO THEY GET THE ADDITIONAL GLUCOSE NEEDED?

THEY COULD SYNTHESIZE PARTS OF TRYGLYCERIDES INTO GLUCOSE--BUT THAT WOULD NOT CREATE MUCH GLUCOSE.

SO ARE WE CONCLUDING THAT THEIR DIET IS KETOGENIC--THAT THEY ARE CONVERING ADDITIONAL FATS INTO KETONES? -I’m not sure if their diet was ketogenic or not to be honest. It probably wasn’t, I may have underestimated carbohydrate intake. As noted in my comment above, there was a lot of variability between tribes and it was incredibly difficult to come up with numbers. Not sure how to address this, as the data are really unclear. The best sources I have are the following: Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas (which includes several Native American tribes and the relative contribution of different food categories

to their diets) and Cordain’s article from 2000 (I realize Cordain isn’t your favorite researcher!) The Speth paper in the Dropbox has some hypotheses about their diets specifically with regard to protein-sparing, but it’s difficult to use for coming up with macronutrient numbers. The Speth paper is also not specific to Plains Indians, but is about hunter-gatherers in general. Also, I didn’t focus on Indians of the southwest or northwest, because they aren’t representative of Plains Indians. These groups had different diets, as the southwest Indians were predominantly agricultural and the northwest Indians consumed fatty fish, mainly salmon. Other groups didn’t consume salmon as far as I can tell.

I THINK THEY WOULD SHOW PREFERENCE FOR GLUCOSE. -The Speth paper mentioned above does say that hunter-gatherers would have shifted towards a greater emphasis on carbohydrates and reliance on plant foods to spare proteins. This is also likely the reason that Plains Indians practiced agriculture even when they were still hunting bison in large numbers. I agree this would be the case, the main issue we have (I think) is how to identify the macronutrient composition of the Plains Indians’ diets. Overall, in considering your comments, I’m thinking maybe I underestimated carbohydrate intake, particularly considering the presence of some agriculture. So, an alternative might be to suggest a slight increase in calories from carbohydrates and protein and a decrease in fat: perhaps around 50% kcals from fat and possible 25% calories each from protein and carbohydrates. I think Cordain likely underestimates carbohydrate intake in is estimations, particularly considering the practice of agriculture.

Proteins

The Plains Indians consumed plenty of complete proteins in the form of muscle meat from bison, as well as the many organ meats, like liver, brains, etc. Fish and insects provided plenty of protein as well, with insects providing plenty of collagenous proteins. They also consumed protein from plant foods, but this protein was not complete and most of their plant foods, with the exception of nuts, were very low in protein. While nuts contain a decent amount of protein, it is unlikely the Plains Indians would have been able to access very many nuts, meaning they still would not have contributed substantially to their protein intake. In contrast, although prairie turnips do not have very much protein, the Plains Indians would have eaten a lot of prairie turnips. Also, the protein in prairie turnips is very high quality, easy to digest and absorb, making it a better nutritional source of protein than other tubers we’re used to eating, like white potatoes or sweet potatoes. Overall, even though some plant foods Plains Indians ate contained protein, they still primarily relied on bison meat for protein. Indeed, they had to limit their protein intake because the body can’t handle eating protein at levels greater than about 35% of calories; therefore, they specifically tried to eat fattier portions of bison, such as the hump meat. This fat seeking behavior was common in other Paleolithic societies as well, like the Inuit.

WHEN ANALYZING PROTEINS, WE ARE LOOKING FOR TWO SOURCES:

COMPLETE: MUSCLE MEAT AND ORGANS, AS WELL AS SOME PANTS

AND SKELEOPROTEINS/COLLAGEN: CONNECTIVE TISSUES: PLEASE ILLUCIDATE ANY EXAMPLES OF CONSUMING THESE PARTS.-I looked again and found two examples of them consuming foods that included skeletoproteins/collagen- described below. Overall, it doesn’t seem like they consumed these very much, as it didn’t come up during my research previously. Archaeological evidence suggests bison bones remained intact at kill sites, so it isn’t clear that they used them in food, with the exceptions below. The stomach is not specifically mentioned as being eaten; however, since they did eat other organs, they likely ate the stomach as well-it would have been raw. They did add fish to stews, but they cooked and chopped the fish prior to adding it to the stew, so they likely didn’t get any collagenous proteins, as they would have if the bones were in the soup as well. Insects have collagenous proteins, particularly the grasshoppers and locusts they crushed or dried. Still not clear how much of this was consumed though.

While the Plains Indians used all parts of the buffalo, the amount of connective tissues they consumed remains unclear. Bison skin was used for tipis and clothing and they did not eat the bones. However, they did split bones to access the marrow fat, boiling the crushed bones in water and skimming the fat off the top. This would have provided them with some collagenous proteins. (There isn’t any mention of them using the water they boiled the bones in for broth, but they could have…) They also made a soup that included hooves and tails. As a rule the Plains Indians enjoyed making soups. While it isn’t clear these soups always contained bones, their reliance on bison for survival and their use of all parts of the bison suggest that soups may have contained bones. However, we should make this assumption with caution, since archaeological evidence suggests that many bison bones remained intact, likely due to the difficulty of transporting such large, heavy bones. They ate organ meat, like the stomach, which is high in connective tissue, so they would have consumed collagenous proteins in that form. Those tribes who ate fish did not appear to consume the bones, and other animal-based foods were eaten much less frequently, making it difficult to ascertain whether they indeed consumed collagenous proteins from those animals. The insects they consumed, particularly grasshoppers and locusts, were high in connective tissues and had a lot of collagenous proteins, though the quantity of insects they ate remains unclear. Overall, the Plains Indians did consume collagenous proteins in their diet, though the relative amount of collagenous proteins is uncertain.

Fats

Almost all of the fat in Plains Indians’ diet came from the bison they consumed because the plant foods they ate, with the exception of nuts, were very low in fats. While some Plains Indians consumed fish and/or insects, these foods likely only contributed minimally to their daily fat intake. Since the vast majority of fat in their diet came from bison, it is possible for us to closely approximate the ratios of fatty acids in their diet.

Bison fat content is 43 percent saturated, 45 percent monounsaturated, and 12 percent polyunsaturated fat. The saturated fat in bison contains about an equal mix of palmitic and stearic acid, with a little bit of myristic acid. The monounsaturated fat in bison is almost all oleic acid. The polyunsaturated fats are what we are usually most interested in from a fat perspective. In the

bison, there are about 6.5 times the amount of omega-6 fatty acids (linoleic and arachidonic acid) compared to omega-3 fatty acids (linolenic acid).

Among those Plains Indians who consumed fish and insects, these foods would not have contributed much to their fat intake, as both are low in fat. However, fish would have positively contributed to mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acid intake.

The plant foods the Plains Indians ate contained small amounts of fat, with more mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and fewer saturated fats. Nuts contained the most fat of any plant foods eaten by the Plains Indians. For example, hazelnuts contain about eighty percent of calories from fat, with about seven percent saturated fat, seventy-five percent monounsaturated fat, and thirteen percent polyunsaturated fats. They also have ninety-times more omega-6 than omega-3 fatty acids. Other plant foods were so low in fat that they really didn’t contribute to fat intake.

Since bison represents the primary source of fat in the Plains Indians’ diet, we can estimate that the average intake of fatty acids in their diet is somewhere in this range: forty to forty-five percent saturated; forty-five percent monounsaturated; and ten to fifteen percent polyunsaturated, while consuming considerably more omega six than omega three fatty acids.

The large amount of omega-6 fatty acids in the Plains Indians’ diet relative to omega-3 fatty acids could be concerning; however, it seems like this didn’t much affect their health, as we will discuss in the section ahead on health.

MAYBE, BUT I DOUBT IT. IN FACT, THE RATIOS SOUND MORE OPTIMUM TO ME. I JUST DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE RARIOS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ONE TO TWO (OMEGA 6).-My suppositions are just based on the health data and on the supposition that the ratios are correct/meaningful from a health perspective.

Carbohydrates

The Plains Indians got enough carbohydrates in their diets from the plant foods they gathered or cultivated, as well as some carbohydrates from raw bison, fish, and insects. Eating bison raw prevents the glycogen from being broken down. So, some carbohydrates would have come from the raw bison the Plains Indians ate immediately after the hunt, particularly the liver. However, once they dried the meat to make pemmican, or cooked it over the fire or on the coals, the amount of carbohydrates from bison meat would have been negligible. Another way the Plains Indians would have gotten carbohydrates from bison was when they consumed the bison’s blood, which would have had glucose in it, since the blood is used to transport glucose throughout the body. Fish and insects would have contributed some carbohydrates to their diets as well.

Even though the Plains Indians did get carbohydrates from eating bison meat and blood, a lot of the carbohydrates in their diet were from the plants they gathered or cultivated. Their popular prairie turnips had a lot of carbohydrates, including fiber, sugars, and starch. The berries and fruits they ate also had a lot of sugar and decent amounts of fiber. Corn also had a decent amount of carbohydrates and fiber. Overall, we can conclude that the Plains Indians likely

consumed plenty of carbohydrates and fiber in their diets, particularly due to their large consumption of prairie turnips.

Vitamins

(Luke-In the first book, you say in the Inuit section that we don’t have data on vitamin K-that’s because you didn’t ask for it to be included in the nutrient information-we can still include it because there are data out there!)

YES, LETS INCLUDE K2. I THINK ITS FOUND IN SOME ANIMAL FOODS: LIVER?

AND OTHER?-Yes, liver contains some vitamin K, but it is predominantly found in leafy green veggies. I added the vitamin K info below.

Given that the Plains Indians eat ample amounts of meat, they receive plenty of all of the B vitamins, particularly B6 and B12. They also get a lot of vitamin B vitamins from eating the bison liver, and from dried or cooked fish. Thus, we can safely assume that they consumed plenty of their B vitamins to maintain good health. One exception to this was folate. Folate is typically found in grain products, and the Plains Indians consumed very few, if any grains. As such, their diets were very low in folate, which could have contributed to neural tube and other birth defects in children (see Disease Risk below).

(Question about folate-not sure that they actually got sufficient folate-this is typically in plant foods, and most of the plant foods they ate didn’t have much folate-the exception is corn.)

LETS CONSIDER FOLATE, TOO.-Okay-I added the folate information above and some corresponding info in the Health section.

Since the Plains Indians at the organ meat of the bison, they were able to get a lot of preformed vitamin A in the form of retinol, particularly from bison liver and kidneys. Of course, the Plains Indians didn’t have access to bison organs year-round, so they needed to get vitamin A from other sources. Fish, particularly dried fish, contained moderate amounts of vitamin A. Also, they were able to get some vitamin A from plant foods as pre-vitamin A. This pre-vitamin A, typically in the form of beta-carotene, can be transformed into vitamin A in the body by simply clipping it in half. The plants the Plains Indians ate, particularly the fruits and berries, contained a decent amount of beta-carotene. One popular plant food, rose hips, have a about one-quarter of the RDA for vitamin A in the form of beta-carotene. Overall, we can conclude that, when the Plains Indians were eating fresh bison they had plenty of vitamin A in their diet. During the winter and early spring, when fresh bison was less plentiful, they probably consumed enough vitamin A to maintain health in combination with their body’s stores of vitamin A (in the liver). This is one of the advantages of fat-soluble vitamins, our bodies can store them over the long-term, allowing humans to survive through periods of feast and famine. This was particularly important for the Plains Indians with regard to vitamin A during times of less fresh bison availability.

The Plains Indians didn’t get very much vitamin D in their diets. The only big source of vitamin D in their diet would have been the bison organs and dried fish. Indeed dried fish likely contained over 100% of daily vitamin D needs. The plant foods they ate did not have much vitamin D. A lot of the Plains Indians likely got sufficient vitamin D from sun exposure during the summer time, which they could have stored in their livers for the winter time when they wouldn’t have sufficient sun exposure. Overall, it’s unlikely that the Plains Indians necessarily had sufficient vitamin D throughout the year to support more than bone health, particularly those who lived further north. However, as we’ll see later when we discuss their health, that they likely had enough vitamin D for bone health, if nothing else.

The Plains Indians didn’t consume very many vitamin E-rich foods. The organ meat and fat of the bison likely had a decent amount of vitamin E, as did fish. Similar to vitamin D; however, the Plains Indians likely didn’t have much vitamin E during the months where bison availability was low and would have relied on their body’s vitamin E stores.

Most of the foods the Plains Indians consumed didn’t have very much vitamin K. The exception being stinging nettles, which have about four times the RDA for vitamin K. Some of the other plant foods they ate, including cattail shoots, chokecherries, and wild rose hips contained small amounts of vitamin K. If they ate sufficient plant foods, they would have decent amounts of vitamin K in their diets. Also, since pemmican often contained foods, like chokecherries, eating pemmican throughout the year would have supplied regular vitamin K in their diets and allowed their bodies to build up and maintain their vitamin K stores year-round.

The Plains Indians had access to vitamin C in their diet through the bison organs and plant foods they consumed. Wild rose hips had a very large amount of vitamin C, about five times the RDA. The wild berries and greens they consumed had decent amounts of vitamin C to avoid developing scurvy. However, preventing scurvy doesn’t necessarily mean they consumed sufficient vitamin C for optimal health.

Macrominerals

Luke-I struggled with this section. This relates to the spreadsheet we were working to figure out how much groups got of particular nutrients. It would be helpful to finish that spreadsheet to help draw conclusions on macromineral intake. I think we can do it decent justice, just needs a little work.

YES YOU CAN EXTRAPOLOATE INFORMATION ON MACROMINERALS SOMEWHAT EASILY, BY CONSIDERING SEVERAL FACTORS: ANIMAL BASED DIET (FAT, NO MINERALS; MOST FLESH HAS SIMILIAR MACROMINERAL COMPOSITIONS); CONSIDERING SOME POTASSIUM RICH PLANTS: AND NO SUPPLEMENTATION OF CALCIUM, OR SODIUM OR CHLORIDE.

SO RELATIVE TO WESTERN DIETS, THEY WERE EXTREMELY LOW IN SODIUM/CHLORIDE , CALCIUM AND HIGHER IN POTASSIUM AND PHOSPOROUS AND MODERATE TO LOW IN MAGNESIUM. I SUPPOSE I THINK THAT CURRENT

RDA ON MACROMINERALS DO NOT CORRELATE TO MANY FORAGERS ON MORE ANIMAL DIETS.

The bison meat the Plains Indians consumed contained many of the minerals required for human health, including potassium, phosphorus, zinc, iron, copper, manganese, and selenium. This meat; however, did not contain much sodium, calcium, or magnesium.

The foods Plains Indians consumed didn’t have much sodium, and they did not add salt to their food.

I HAVE SEEN NO MENTION OF THE USE OF SALT--SO I ASSUME IT WAS NOT USED--WHICH APPEARS TO BE THE PATTERN FOR ALL FORAGERS. -Yes, I’m thinking the same thing. The data I have on dried fish suggests it’s high in sodium-I’m guessing this is because the nutrient data is based on salting fish to dry them. The question is whether or not they actually did this prior to European contact. I don’t have any evidence one way or the other that they did indeed do this prior to contact.

In contrast, they had a fair amount of potassium in their diets from bison organ meat, fish, and plants. Many of the fruits they consumed had a large amount of potassium, as did wild rose hips, and nuts. They did get some calcium from meat products, but it really depended on the cut of meat. In contrast, they would have eaten a lot of calcium from hazelnuts and stinging nettles. Among those who consumed fish and insects, these were also good calcium sources. Phosphorus was plentiful in the animal foods they consumed, with very little in plant-based foods. Overall, we can guess that, since the Plains Indians ate so much bison meat and organs, that they got the vast majority of their macro- and micro-minerals from bison. This isn’t a bad thing, since bison meat is abundant in many of the minerals. Also, despite their lesser intake of certain minerals, like calcium, the data on their health suggest that they didn’t suffer terribly from malnutrition. Rather, they went through periods of malnutrition but overall seemed decently healthy considering the time period during which they lived.

I JUST DO NOT THINK WE NEED LOTS OF CALCIUM IN OUR DIETS, THAT THE RDA IS JUST WRONG. BUT I ALSO SEE NO EVIDENCE THAT CALCIUM HURTS.-Yes, it would be difficult to overconsume calcium in part because of our body’s ability to regulate calcium absorption based on the body’s current needs.

Colonic Metabolism

The Plains Indians’ interaction with Europeans occurred so early in their history that we do not have information on their colonic metabolism to a large degree. Their consumption of high fiber foods like prairie turnips and corn likely positively affected their colon health. However, without archaeological data, we do not the composition of their gut microbiome and how that affected their health.

SAME OLD QUESTION: WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE COLONS OF MOSTLY CARNIVIROIUS PEOPLE?

Nutrigenetics

The Plains Indians seem to exhibit genetic differences that affect their disease risk related to the foods they eat. It’s widely recognized that present-day descendants are at high risk for insulin risk and type 2 diabetes. Indeed they have genetic variants of the gene nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChr) that contribute to their risk for insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, and abdominal obesity, which is strongly related to negative health outcomes. They are also more likely to express of variant in the angiopoietin-like protein family that is associated with low HDL cholesterol levels and type 2 diabetes. Finally, they have a high frequency of a variant of the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene that is associated with high levels of homocysteine in the blood plasma. This increases their risk for heart disease. As we see, the Plains Indians have several different genetic differences that increase their risk for a variety of chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. As we will find out later, the genetic differences listed above, combined with modern diets, are extremely bad for the Plains Indians, making them at very high risk for diseases that didn’t much affect them during the Paleolithic era (see Disease Risk).

In contrast, Plains Indians exhibit two genetic adaptations that are protective. One of this is the same adaptation we discussed in the Inuit. Specifically, the Plains Indians express different alleles of the fatty acid desaturase genes. Their mutations decrease omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acid production and have a protective effect on cholesterol, triglyceride, and insulin levels. It turns out that this adaptation was the result of a single adaptive event that occurred in a common ancestor of the Inuit, Plains Indians, and other Native Americans before they migrated out of Beringia.

(Another genetic difference between Plains Indians and Europeans/European Americans in particular, is the preponderance of lactose intolerance. 95% of current day Native Americans are lactose intolerant, and this number was likely 100% among Plains Indians during the Paleolithic period. This is because the majority of humans stop producing lactase, the enzyme that digests lactose in dairy products, around age twenty. The few humans who continue producing lactase throughout their lifespans are genetic anomalies, representing groups who began raising dairy cattle thousands of years ago. Humans descended from these groups (primarily Europeans) are lactose tolerant; however, the vast majority of humans, including Native Americans, are lactose intolerant because dairy was introduced so recently in evolutionary history. This isn’t surprising when we consider the various indigenous diets. With the exception of indigenous peoples occasionally consuming curdled milk products from the stomach contents of young animals, dairy was not consumed. Additionally, curdling milk reduces the lactose content, meaning even those people who did consume these products would have had less lactose exposure and, thus, less need for evolutionary adaptations promoting lactase production throughout the lifespan.)

DO WE HAVE ANY EVIDENCE THAT THEY COULD BETTER DIGEST, METABOLIZE FATS, ESPECIALLY SATURATED FATS?-I didn’t find any evidence of this when looking into nutrigenetics, but I looked again and found that they have the same adaptation as the Inuit, as well as another adaptation. I added said information above. There’s more detailed information in the research doc if desired.

Stature

Similar to other Paleolithic cultures, the Plains Indians’ men were taller than the women. Information on their height varies depending on the time period considered, with data suggesting that men were between 5’3” and 5’6”, and women were shorter, around 5’2” tall.

(Luke-the data on stature vary quite a bit-see the foodways comprehensive doc. Not sure how to resolve this. Also, during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Plains Indians men were 6 feet and taller, quite unusual. It may be worth keeping that info in the back of our heads for future books).

THE CHANGE IN STATURE IS INTERESTING. AS YOU KNOW THIS HAPPENS FREQUENTLY AMONGST PEOPLE IN THE SAME GENE POOL.

THEY CHANGE THEIR DIET--AND STATURE CHANGES. -yep!

MY GUESS PLAINS INDIANS GREW TALLER, LATER, BECAUSE THEY HAD MOMENTARILY GREAT ACCESS TO BUFFALO--MEAT AND FAT--AS WELL AS STARCH, PROVIDING ALL THREE MACRONUTRIENTS TO PROMOTE BETTER GROWTH.-I agree that this supposition makes sense. Not sure where you’d like the information on their change in stature later on, but the data are saved in the DropBox, so we have the information when we need it!

Lifespan

The Plains Indians lived for a similar length of time to other Paleolithic humans, with their life expectancy varying from 18.6-33 years. Their lifespan did vary a little depending on the time span studied, with some living as long as 42 years; however, the vast majority of them had an average life expectancy between 24 and 33 years old. This may not seem very long to us, but the extreme amount of hard work they did, as well as the dangers they encountered from hunting and warfare, limited their lifespans. Women often did early because of the extreme toll of their hard work and how often they had children. Men, on the other hand, died because of the dangers they encountered hunting and during warfare. Finally, child mortality rates were very high, which was quite common during the Paleolithic timespan.

CAN YOU MAKE THIS DETERMINATION:

--IS THE SHORTER LIFE SPAN DUE TO PREMATURE DEATH THROUGH PHYSICAL ENDEAVORS?

--OR JUST THE OVERALL LIFESTYLE AND DIET.-The sources I read suggest that premature death was due to the physical toll of their lifestyles-they don’t mention diet-but this

could be due to the context of the research, not because diet wasn’t a contributor. I’m not sure we can determine that it was simply physical endeavors that were the problem. It makes logical sense this would be combined with challenges related to potential malnutrition. Although the malnutrition they experienced was seasonal, I imagine this would still would have negative effects over the long-term, compromising immunity (like in the case of anemia). I struggle saying it’s just physical endeavor, as we know that the body’s resiliency is related to the diet, if not, this project wouldn’t exist! So, I imagine the lifespan issue was an overall combination of lifestyle and diet. I now realize that isn’t mentioned above… Below is a sentence we could add:

Their lifestyles took an extreme physical toll on their bodies. It is likely that this extreme physical toll combined with seasonal malnutrition, and associated decreases in immunity and overall health, contributing to their short lifespan.

Disease risk

Prior to European contact, the primary diseases the Plains Indians dealt with were malnutrition, specific nutritional deficiencies-like anemia, food poisoning, tuberculosis, diseases caused by the organism that causes syphilis, and other minor diseases caused by bacteria, parasites, and protozoa. Infectious diseases like colds or the flu we experience today were not very common. This is because they didn’t have very many domesticated animals (which often carry infectious diseases that get transmitted to humans) and because their population densities were so small. Additionally, the fact that the Plains Indians were nomadic meant that, if there were disease in a water source or animals in an area where they set up camp, they would quickly move on, so the toll of such a disease would be very low. Even though they did experience malnutrition, scurvy was not one of the disease they exhibited. They did experience iron deficiency anemia, which was more common during time periods when the Plains Indians relied more on agriculture, since this meant they weren’t getting as much iron in their diets from animal foods. This iron deficiency caused additional problems because it decreased immunity and increased their susceptibility to infections. Rates of neural tube defects, like spina bifida, were somewhat high, which could be due to nutritional deficiencies in folate. In general, the malnutrition they experienced wasn’t sustained, but came in short periods, like related to the winter time, when animal food sources were scarce and they relied on stored plant foods and pemmican for survival. Overall, the Plains Indians living before widespread uptake of agricultural practices had better health than those who used agriculture. In fact, the rate of chronic diseases resulting in death were quite low. Overall, this suggests that the causes of death were likely acute, such as being killed when hunting or during warfare, and that chronic disease was not a major cause of death. This shouldn’t surprise us, since chronic disease often doesn’t appear to affect health until the 40s and 50s. Since they often didn’t live this long, we wouldn’t expect chronic disease to be a major issue.

Introduction of the Horse

As we mentioned before, the horse was introduced to Plains Indians by the Spanish in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. By the late 17th century, the horse had become part of the culture of the Plains Indians, with the exception of those tribes living further north, where it was

more difficult to feed the horses during the winter. The adoption of the horse into their culture allowed them to travel greater distances to track buffalo herds, because the horses moved faster and they could carry greater loads than dogs, which increased their hunting territories. Along with increasing the size of their hunting territories, the adoption of the horse in combination with the arrival of guns in the mid-1700s changed how the Indians hunted. The pictures we see by Rembrandt and other artists depicting Indians riding on horses and closely approaching the bison for kills demonstrates their changing hunting styles. This style of hunting was more dangerous but also became something of a sport to the men, indicating their daring and bravery.

The adoption of the horse also increased warfare for a number of reasons. One was the accompanying increase in their hunting territories, is because tribes who previously had little contact with each other were now competed for the same hunting territory. Additionally, horses allowed men more leisure time, because hunting didn’t take as long, and this increase in leisure time meant more time for conducting war. Also, horses became a status symbol, which encouraged men to raid other villages to steal horses and increase their economic and social status. This adoption of horses as an economic and social symbol also introduced some hierarchy into their previously egalitarian social structure, making them more commercially oriented. Horses were often given as gifts to a bride’s family, and women wanted to marry men who could provide horses to her family. It also changed the nature of their trade with European Americans, with trade focusing specifically on horses, guns, and metal produces. Overall, the Plains Indians became more nomadic with the adoption of the horse, but they did live in villages during the spring and fall, where they planted and harvested crops.

The tools used for dressing skins, both for clothing and for tipis, were made from bone, antler, and horn, and they used bone awls to punch holes in the hides for sewing. They made spoons, ladles, and dishes from bison or sheep horns. The Plains Indians were ingenious in their ability to put handles on their tools. For example, they wrapped green wood and rawhide around a grooved stone and dipped the tool into glue. Once the glue dried and the hide shrunk, the tool was ready for use. When processing bison, they used hammer stones and knives. They also had stone scrapers for processing the bison’s skin on site.

Men made their own weapons, including bows and arrows, lances (spears), and knives. Lances (spears) were made from a pole tipped with a flint or metal point. These were the first tools they used for hunting. They made their bones from wood or pronghorns, and they preferably used Osage orange wood, also known as bois d’arc. They strengthened their bows by winding them with sinew from the bison’s backbone. Bow strings were made from a variety of materials, including bison sinew, rawhide strips, bear intestines, squirrel hide, or twisted vegetable fibers. Men used a variety of woods to make arrows, with the preferred wood depended on the tribe. They cut the arrow shafts to their desired length and shape and tied them in a bunch to season near a fire for about ten days, and after that they rounded the arrow using a combination of their teeth, fire, grease, and a special arrow straightener. After straightening the

shaft they painted and polished it and then attached owl, turkey, or buzzard feathers with glue. Stone points were originally used; however, after contact, it was much more common to use metal. The tools they used for fishing included nets made from vines and fish hooks made from bone.