Comanche Diet

[Bryan Bondurant]

This is the first thread I started in a while, so a thanks out to Terry and Rob. Fall is on the way, had a nice talk with a guy today about getting ready for winter in Alaska,,,,,, If I was up there now i would be working 24/7 towards winter.

Down here, Im too fat, have the easy life, can make a phone call and or order online any amount of food healthy or not, gorge till my gut pops like a pimple, as can most Americans,,,,,, Pretty dang gross to thank about.

Being that I am in real Comanche country, where a lot of the known history took place and probably already an expert on most things Comanche,,,,, It got me wondering what they really ate, What did Comanches eat and when did they eat it?

I know lots of weird stuff but looking for others ideas on the subject? I have some experience eating bile from cow guts and that kind of thing, but what and how did Comanches eat raw guts from fresh animal kills?

How long could Buffalo really be eaten after a kill? Did they have access to salt on a large scale? Pounds at a time to brine meat and dry it on a large scale?

Was there any number of pecan trees in West Texas and or New Mexico as we know today. Were there any peanuts available west of the Mississippi in the 1800s? From what I understand, there was hardly a drop of water or even a bush on the Llano Esticado aka High Plains of the Comanche, lots of questions,,,,,,,,

[Bryan Bondurant]

It goes without saying, the Comanche killed most everything with traditional archery. My interest for the thread is food consumption, how far one can go eating raw meat and organs. Everyone has heard the stories of eating a buffalo heart, but there are few stories of what exactly one can hydrate off of on a fresh kill.

Certainly an eye ball is safe to take fluids from without cooking? I've done it with fish raw but only cooked from game.

The Comanche were famous for cold camps, no fires, eating raw horse meat, but who has any modern experience or even historical reference to how far one can really go with a Comanche Diet and stay healthy?

Another question is how did they dry out meats exactly? What brine if any did they use and how was it sourced? In Thailand I found a historical site that was mining salt for maybe a thousand years, did Comanches have a working knowledge of salt, sourcing and using it? Seems like a simple question. The first thing that comes up in a basic search is Comanche Drive, Salt Lake City.

[David Mitchell]

I don't know the answer to any of those questions but I am sure looking forward to what others may have to say.  A very interesting and fresh topic.

[Ron LaClair]

We are carnivores and can consume any kind of red meat. It can be eaten raw but it's safer to cook it. Drying or smoking it is a good way to preserve meat. You don't need a fancy smoker to do that.

While camped at a primitive camp site I've dried strips of venison over an open fire draped over a rack made of green wood. Slow heat and smoke dries and preserves the meat so it can be kept for long periods of time, fish can be preserved the same way.

Meat can also be roasted over a fire, wrapped in vegetation and buried in the coals or boiled in water.

You can't live on just meat so you have to learn what wild plants are safe to eat.

This is at one of our primitive camps roasting beavers over a wood fire

[reddogge]

I'm not sure if you even need salt to dry meat but they probably had sites to mine it. Slice it thin and hang on racks until dry. They probably made pemmican using the dried meat, berries, animal fat,  and made into cakes or stuffed into intestine casings.

[Ron LaClair]

In the fall of the year our group went on a survival trek for a week at a time living off the land by hunting with our flintlock muzzleloaders. All we carried for food was dried peas salt, bear oil, and flour. We slept under canvas tarps used as a lean-too.
Each day everyone hunted for our meat. Every critter went into a big cooking pot, squirrels, grouse, rabbit, racoon, porcupine cooked until the meat came off the bone. The deboned meat was mixed into a pot of the dried peas. French Voyagers ate this kind of food daily only instead of wild game meat it was salted pork.

[M60gunner]

I have been reading books lately written at the turn of the last century by men who had direct contact with various Indian tribes. From what I read the Indians mostly dried the meat for winter or when they knew game would be scarce while they moved from place to place. How long it lasted after a kill would depend on the weather. From what I gather an animal was killed and shared with the whole group. What wasn’t eaten was left for the critters. Some tribes or groups were more industrious and gathered nuts and berries to make the pemmican. Of course all work was done by the women. The men did the hunting.

[nineworlds9]

So cooking also denatures proteins helping make the amino acids more bioavailable and easier to digest. You most certainly can live off of just meat if you have enough fat with it and eat a greater variety of meat other than just muscle meat. Interestingly fresh red meat actually has vitamin C so no, you won't get scurvy haha. Ruminant meats are the most nutritious. Basically variety is your friend, and you have to eat enough. I am smiling at this topic, I have been carnivore for over 9 months now as a health experiment. In that time my cholesterol has gone from 241 to 148 with a better balance, I have gone down two holes on my belt and am the physically strongest I have ever been. I eat 2-4 pounds of meat a day based on my activity level. Meat makes a fine turd if you drink enough water.    There is a lot of misinfo about meat and health out there because of things like vegans and the grain lobby. Meat and animal fat are 100% healthy for you if you don't eat them combined with sugar, plant oils and junk.

[GCook]

You have to realize there were no dams, no large farms to irrigate, no large cities to provide millions of gallons per day of water to.
Streams and rivers flowed differently back then.  Game movements and river bottoms were entirely different.   You cannot compare today's conditions to then.

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

When game was scarce they ate horses and dogs as well.   Tribes also went to war over areas that had high concentrations of prickly pear fruit. 

Supposedly the Comanche didnt partake in cannabalism,  but meat is meat.   The Caddo indians were noted by early European explorers along the Red River to eat the fingers off of their captives after taking them prisoner during raids.  Im sure it didnt stop at the fingers tho.  I bet our cheek meat would be pretty good.

[Bryan Bondurant]

Ron, Thanks for the reply, I have known your name for over 30 years.

Just had a long day so a quick post but will have more time tomorrow. There is a very specific reason the Comanche were the last tribe to be defeated, they had migrated on foot from the mountains, discovered, became one with horses, then mastered the Palasaded Plains aka Llano Estacado an area feared by every cowboy, indian hunter, and soldier, because it was drier than a desert.

Only a hundred years ago and days, modern wells were drilled here, only then crops and trees planted, before that were only two things, Comanches and Death.  b.

[cacciatore]

Great stuff keep it coming

[John Cholin]

For years, when I was younger, I , too, participated in numerous historical treks with friends where we also lived off the land.  Usually we were cruising the Catskill mountains in New York or the Endless Mountains Region of PA.  We all carried a pound of cornmeal mixed with some whole wheat flour and maple sugar.  We would mix this with some wood ashes and make ash-cakes for breakfast.  We would usually take a break around noon.  Each of us had our own favored food for mid-day.  Usually we were eating parched corn, jerky and dried apples or other dried fruit.  We also carried some form of dried grain, pearled barley for me, rice and steel-cut oats for others.  What wild meat we obtained during the day was tossed in a boiler along with some dried grain and dried fruit, usually dried apples.  When the grain was cooked soft we ate the resulting stew.  We were limited by the game laws so our meat usually consisted of wood chuck, porcupine, opossum and an occasional rattlesnake.  No one gained any weight on a trek! 

We traveled with one blanket and an oil cloth for shelter, regardless of the season.  I found that I needed a 7 ft. by 9 ft. oil cloth if I wanted to be able to deal with all of the weather variations.  In cold weather (some treks were in February) we would start making our over-night camp about 2 hours before dark.  We would make a bed of twigs across two rails which we then covered with gathered-up leaves, lay our blanket down and then cover the blanket with more gathered-up leaves and twigs.  That mess was then covered with the oil cloth, leaving a hole at the top so we could slide in at night. 

Usually treks lasted for 4 or 5 days for us.  We all binged on Big Macs on the drive home.

JMC

[McDave]

“We would mix this with some wood ashes and make ash-cakes for breakfast.“

Never heard of this before.  What is the point of the wood ashes?

[Huntschool]

I think I could manage (and have) to eat a bit further up the food chain then add ashes to a cake.  Jerkey, parched corn and dried fruits are easy to carry.  Pemmican can be enhanced with fruit, honey and, I like pecans in mine.

Oh yea, and I grew up in Jersey.....  I assume your treks were during summer break and Christmas break from school so that you would have enough time to do them.

Where are you from in Jersey ?

[John Cholin]

Friends,

Ash cakes were customary fare in colonial American frontier as long as your stash of flour held out.  The wood ashes are comprised of sodium and potassium carbonate.  Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate and double acting baking powder is a mix of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate.  The wood ash added to the cornmeal/flour mix would decompose at 300 F to carbon dioxide gas just like baking powder does in biscuit dough.  I carried a 6 inch diameter fry-pan and made a cake for breakfast each morning.  It was almost like a single 6-inch pancake.  Sometimes I made two, one for breakfast and I would stash the second in my wallet ( the space inside your shirt above you belt-sash) for lunch.

I did all this when I was in my 40's and 50's before my knees got too bad.  I trekked with a bunch of guys who were all into colonial American history.  We did wilderness treks, historical recreations, sugar camps, hunting trips all total 18th century, no modern anything.  I learned a lot and had a great time!

But we all got older and it just got harder to do and harder to get together.  So I got new knees and shifted my focus to bowhunting, and here I am.

JMC

[McDave]

Thanks for the info!  Interesting.

[Huntschool]

OK on the ash now.... that makes more sense.  Have done the same but used just a bit of ash when needed.  It sounded like you were just mixing a volume of ash as an expander to the product.

[DocWolf]

There is an article called “Guts and Grease A Native American Diet”. It is a very interesting read for someone curious about the Native American diet. It was put out by the Dr. Weston Price Foundation. It makes me realize how much I really waste of an animal.

https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/guts-and-grease-the-diet-of-native-americans/

[Bryan Bondurant]

There is an article called “Guts and Grease A Native American Diet”. It is a very interesting read for someone curious about the Native American diet. It was put out by the Dr. Weston Price Foundation. It makes me realize how much I really waste of an animal.

https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/traditional-diets/guts-and-grease-the-diet-of-native-americans/

Thats by far the best article on the subject I have seen. Most of the so called "Comanche" food stories I have found were generic.

Obviously one can only eat what is available so thats the next step is comprise a list of what food sources were available on top of the Llano Estacado. I live up here on the top, so can say for sure we have some Elk, mule deer, antelope, rabbits, quail, pheasant, grouse, weirdly, I have never seen a squirrel or a raccoon up here but we have a few skunks and bobcats, I doubt the latter were eaten but its possible if your hungry enough.

I have seen some waterfowl closer to Lubbock and know there were a few spring fed ponds prior to intensive agricultural wells that lowered the aquifer water table and drained them. Most of the water I see, ponds, are newer man made tanks.

For sure there were buffalo up here on the top, but how many? I know the eastern edges of Comanche Territories was the Brazos river, the largest herds and best grasses along the Brazos north of Graham Texas. That area is currently producing the largest whitetail deer in Texas.

As mentioned, Comanche were not at all shy about eating horse meat. I have heard one story that when they were chased, which could go on for days, they always had extra loose horses in the group, would ride a horse to death, cut open its guts, wrap intestines around there neck and shoulders and keep on going. Whats not known is exactly what parts of intestines would have been taken, my best initial guess is bladder and urinary tract to sustain fluids but thats just a guess based on the need to stay hydrated.

Im experienced with drying meats but not pemican. So far the only pemican recipes I have found were generic. The plan now is spend some time figuring out local wild ingredients and coming up with my own recipes.

One thing that did stand out and its a cheat, is to use coconut oil instead of rendered fat. Coconut oil is readily available and by passes the need to render, is less likely to get messed up and go bad on you, again its cheating but probably worth experimenting with since its easy to get.