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

Chapter 262 of 68 9/20/2012 1:34 PMRussell, F. 1898. Explorations in the Far North. Iowa City: Univ. Iowa Press, p. 228. (Hypodermatidae)Russell, F. 1908. The Pima Indians. 26th Ann. Rpt., Bur. Am. Ethnol., p. 81. (Sphingidae)Sandel, A. 1715. (Note.) Mitchell and Millers Medical Repository 4: 71.* (Cicadidae)Sapir, E.; Spier, L. 1943. Notes on the culture of the Yana. Univ. Calif. Anthropol. Recs. 3(3): 239-298.*(Pteronarcyidae)Schmid, J.M. 1984. Emergence of adult pandora moths in Arizona. Great Basin Nat. 44: 161-165.(Saturniidae)Shimkin, D.B. 1947. Wind River Shoshone ethnogeography. Univ. Calif. Anthropol. Recs. 5(4), p. 265.Insects were not a food staple, but a few people, particularly in the Green River country, ate locusts,crickets and ants.Silver, Shirley. 1978. Shastan Peoples. In: W.C. Sturtevant 1978, pp. 211-224.Shasta territory was rich in food resources (p. 216), and grasshoppers and crickets were among thesignificant non-vegetal foods. If people from other divisions were visiting in the Shasta Valley at the right time,they also gathered and ate crickets. "Men hunted and fished; women gathered seeds, bulbs, roots, insects, andgrubs and caught fish in baskets."Simms, S.R. 1984. Aboriginal Great Basin Foraging Strategies: An Evolutionary Analysis. Ph.D. Diss., Dept.Anthropol, Univ. Utah, Salt Lake City. (Introduction)Simpson, J.H. 1876. Report of explorations across the Great Basin of the Territory of Utah for a directwagon-route from Camp Floyd to Genoa, in Carson Valley, in 1859. U.S. Army, Engineer Dept., U.S. Govt. Print.Off., Washington, D.C., pp. 35, 36, 53.Simpson (p. 35) mentions that: "Some of the weaker bands both of the Snakes and Utahs are almostcontinually in a state of starvation, and are compelled to resort almost exclusively to small animals, roots, grass,seed, and insects for subsistence." Relative to the Go-shoots, an offshoot of the Ute Indians, Simpson mentionsspecifically as foods (pp. 36, 53) rabbits, rats, lizards, snakes, insects, rushes, roots, and grass-seeds. He statesthat rabbits are their largest game and it is seldom they kill an antelope.Skinner, A. 1910. The use of insects and other invertebrates as food by the North American Indians. J. NewYork Entomol. Soc. 18: 264-267.The author reviews some of the earlier literature and states that, west of the Mississippi River insects areused as food by tribes of the Algonkian, Siouan, Shoshonean, Athabasca, Pujunan, Pinan, and Shastan stocks, "atleast." He says that records of food insect use by tribes east of the Mississippi are lacking, and suggests that the"universal practice of agriculture south of the Great Lakes" obviated any need for insects as food, thus explainingthe absence of such customs.Smith, Anne M. 1974. Ethnography of the northern Utes. Mus. N. Mex. Papers Anthropol. No. 17, pp. 1-288,30 pls. (Acrididae)Smith, J.S. 1977. The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith. His Personal Account of the Journey toCalifornia, 1826-1827. (Edited by G.R. Brooks 1977.) Glendale, Calif.: The Arthur H. Clark Co.Smith mentions "Sugar Candy" (pp. 90-91), which, on enquiry he found was made from cane grass. Theeditor of this work, George R. Brooks, quotes from a report by Lt. Robert S. Williamson, who, during the courseof work on the railroad surveys reported cane at the same location in 1853. Williamson wrote: "[The Indians]seemed at this season of the year [August] to be principally employed in collecting a kind of bulrush or cane,upon the leaves of which is found a substance very like sugar, which to them is a not unimportant article of food.They cut the cane and spread it in the sun to dry, and afterwards, by threshing, separate the sugar from the leaf.