Question about Some Siouan cooking habits.

[Tom Leonard]

Bob,

I have seen the same thing among Ponca people, but it was many years ago. I
can't recall the name of the inner bark off hand. As I recall, that had a
great many uses (including this horrid tasting tea that could whip any cold
known to man). There was also inner bark from dogwood tree (also having
medicinal qualities) and a few others. If they were boiling big tubs of meat
they would often throw long twists of that bark in there.

Grandma use to cook water lilly roots when she could get them. She claimed
that they had medicinal qualities, but I never ran that one down. They were
a big favorite, but hard to get (the northern variety being preferred).

There were all kinds of other things that old Ponca folks used to call "real
Indian food", but it might be too long to go into here. I have a list of
Ponca names for some of them if that would help you. Unfortunately, not many
cook that way anymore.

Also, I was somewhat amazed to find how many of the names Gilmore had
collected (Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region)
were/are still retained.

Tom Leonard


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>
To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 4:44 PM
Subject: Question about Some Siouan cooking habits.


I'm sitting in on an ethnobotany course this semester, and one of the things
that was mentioned was that the Masai and other African tribes who depend
almost exclusively on meat and meat products for food mix Acacia bark in
with their stew and it has a cholesterol-lowering medicinal effect.  This
reminded me of something Mrs. Rowe told me about Kaw cooking.  She said that
THEY USED TO PUT THE INNER BARK OF THE ELM TREE IN THEIR COOKING GREASE.  I
always figured that they just liked the flavor it imparted, but I'm finding
out that it probably had specific and positive medicinal effects.

Have any of the rest of you heard of this habit among other Siouan-speaking
peoples?  I suspect Mrs. Rowe was referring to /hiNje $cu$ce/ the "slippery
elm", because its inner bark is sort of gooey.  It would also serve as a
thickener for meat broth.

Bob