Native History & Foodways in the Brazos Valley and Vicinity: Feeding Families before HEB or Pot-Luck Arrived Texas Master Naturalist, El Camino Real Chapter

Milano Methodist Church, May 10, 2018 Alston V. Thoms, Anthropology, TAMU Tyler

San Antonio

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 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” Agri- culture Little, if any, evidence for Agri- Agri- pre-Columbian culture culture Agri- agriculture culture west of Trinity Hunting River, as Agri- & agriculture culture Gathering never developed there and H&G lifeways persisted into Historic era 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

Native American, Anglo- and African-Americans encountered “native” Texas Indians everywhere they attempted to settle Louis Berlandier described & Sanchez y Topia sketched (1828) Caddo, Wichita, Tonkawa, Comanche, Apache in B/CS vicinity Native American Diversity in Brazos Valley varied through time and across space

Yerpibame Apache Tejas Payaya Bedai Cocos Cantonae Kickapoo Meyeye Mixcal Cherokee Jojuane Xarame Choctaw Tancague Sijame Caddo Waco

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