INDIAN COOKING
Young people often wonder what Indian cooking is like, and groups of them—as a class in Sunday school or day school—may like to eat a meal of Indian foods. Following are a few common Hidatsa dishes. Usually, but one kind of food was eaten at a single meal.
Madapozhee Eekteea[35],or Boiled Whole Corn
Pour three pints of water into a kettle and set on the fire. Drop in a pint of shelled field corn, a handful of kidney beans and a lump of suet the size of an egg. Boil until the corn kernels burst open.
[35]Mä dä pō´ zhēē Ēēk tēē´ ä
Manakapa[36],or Mush
Put a pint of shelled field corn into a canvas cloth, and with ax or stone pound to a coarse meal; or the corn may be ground in a coffee mill. To this meal add a handful of kidney beans, and boil in two pints of water. The Hidatsa mortar for pounding corn into meal is shown in cut on page 156.
[36]Mä´ nä kä pä
Dried, or Jerked, Meat
Cut some beefsteak, round or sirloin, into thin strips. Dry the strips on a stage of small poles (see cut on page 141) in the open air or over a slow fire, or in the kitchen oven, until brittle and hard. Meat thus dried could be kept for months. Warriors and hunters often ate jerked meat raw or toasted over a fire. In the lodge, it was more often boiled a few minutes to soften it; and the broth was drunk as we drink coffee. (See also “Drying Meat”, page 185.)
Pemmican
Take strips of beef, dried as described above, and pound them to shreds between two hard stones. Put the shredded mass in a bowl, and pour over it a little marrow fat from a boiled soup bone, or some melted butter.
Corn Balls
The Hidatsas raised sweet corn for parching. Hunters often carried a pouch of the parched grain for a lunch. Parched ripe sweet corn was often pounded to a fine meal, kneaded with lumps of hot roasted suet, and rolled between the palms into little lumps, or balls, the size of one’s thumb.
Hidatsa custom did not permit a woman to speak to her son-in-law; but she often showed her love for him by making him a bowl of corn balls.