Chapter 2. Insect Foods of North American Indigenous Populations ...

Chapter 233 of 68 9/20/2012 1:34 PMNebraska. I have often heard my father, who was then a boy, tell of those Indians eatinggrasshoppers and the interesting way in which they caught them. They would dig a deep hole inthe ground and then, choosing a time when there was no wind and when a fire would burn on theprairie slowly and could be kept under control, they would encircle several acres around this holewith a ring of fire and drive the hoppers into the hole and capture them by the bushel. They werethen dried and ground into meal to be mixed with their corn meal and made into bread.Jensen (1930; vide Madsen and Kirkman 1988) makes no reference to insects as food, but relative to theGreat Salt Lake, he states, "at times shifts of the wind blew clouds of the grasshoppers out upon the lake, wherethey were drowned and washed in upon the shores in great windrows, in some cases, pickled by the brine,remaining several years" (see below under Madsen and Kirkman).Essig (1931) states that: "Grasshoppers were held in the greatest and most universal favor. They werealways abundant in many parts of the state every year. They constituted a clean, nutritious, and healthy food.The common method of preparation was to roast them in the hot coals and ashes and then grind them into a mealwhich could be made into a gruel or mixed with acorn meal into a combination mush-gruel, or baked into abread." According to Essig, the most abundant species in the high mountain meadows throughout California is"the yellow-winged" or "pellucid grasshopper," Camnula pellucida (Scudder), and associated with it in northernCalifornia and the Sacramento Valley in large numbers, were "the lesser migratory locust," Melanoplus atlanis(Riley); "the red-legged locust," M. femur-rubrum (DeGeer); "the two-striped locust," M. bivittatus (Say); and"the valley grasshopper," Oedaloenotus enigma (Scudder). The dominant species in the western Sierra foothillsand the Sacramento Valley was "the devastating grasshopper," Melanoplus devastator Scudder, while in thelower San Joaquin Valley "the differential grasshopper," M. differentialis (Thomas), occurred in abundance alongthe rivers and in marsh areas. In the more arid areas of southern California and the foothills, "the large greenvalley grasshopper," Schistocerca venusta Scudder, was abundant. According to Essig, all of these species, and,probably, others, were consumed.Essig relates as follows the observations of a relative of his who lived in the Sacramento Valley during theearly 1850s:The method then used in that place was to build a large fire which was reduced to a bed of coals.The Indians then formed a large circle and drove the grasshoppers into the coals where they weresoon roasted, removed and eaten at once or preserved for the future. In other places pits weredug in which the fire was built and into which the grasshoppers were driven or deposited. Attimes the insects were captured and killed and dried in the sun, after which they were ground intoa meal.According to Reagan (1934a: 54) it was alleged that the Goshute of Deep Creek country in Utah “driedgrasshoppers for eating."Steward (1938: 34), in his study of the Basin-Plateau tribes of eastern California, Nevada, Idaho andUtah, mentions that grasshoppers and Mormon crickets were extremely abundant in some years and could betaken in quantities that would last for months.Lowie (1939: 327) reported the Washo boiled grasshoppers in baskets, and also cooked locusts in theground and dried them. A long-legged insect also served as food. Lowie gives the Washo terms for these insects.Morgan (1947: 255; vide Sutton 1988: 13) described repeated grasshopper infestations in the Salt Lakearea in the 1850s and 1860s, many of the grasshoppers falling into the lake and being washed up in longwindrows on the shore (see Madsen and Kirkman 1988 for the food relevance of this).Volney H. Jones, in Burgh and Scoggin (1948: 94-99) reported that insect remains recovered from astorage cist along the Yampa River on the Utah-Colorado border were grasshoppers. The material, from a cacherecovered during excavations of Mantles Cave in northwestern Colorado, and dated to roughly post-A.D. 650,were analyzed and found to be partly sand and partly insect remains in a fairly comminuted state with a fewscattered parts of leaves and plant stems. Jones reports:The insect remains are almost wholly composed of grasshoppers of the first, second, third andfourth instars. All of those that could be identified belong to the genus Melanoplus, and appear tobe mostly of one species, though there may be more than one. Most of them are adult, and themajority are in the second and fourth instars. The bodies are finely divided, and the parts arejammed together in the greatest confusion, legs sticking into heads, legs clumped together, etc., asif they had been mashed or chopped or ground up into a solid mass.Other types of insects in the sample included unidentified fly pupae, an ant, and a few beetles that were