Native food sovereignty | Choctaw survivance links agriculture, foraging, hunting and fishing
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Illustration 1. Winter hunting lodge |
Moderator’s Note: In our continuing
series on indigenous food and seed sovereignty we present a contribution drawn
from a larger series by the Choctaw Nation on indigenous foods and foodways. We
thank our colleague Brit Reed for bringing this work to our attention. The original can be found at Choctaw Nation. One lesson I draw from this wisdom is the resilience built into foodways that are adapted to seasonal and other ecological changes, including those introduced by contact and exchanges with settler colonial forces.
Deep food rooted in
land, water, and vibrant matter
INDIGENOUS ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT
Choctaw Nation | Durant, OK | January 20, 2016 [this post]
Choctaw society developed out of a long and intimate
relationship with the plants, animals, soil, and water of our homeland in the
southeast. Through this relationship, Choctaw ancestors engineered a food way
that minimized their risk of going hungry by relying on a combination of four
independent food systems: agriculture, gathering wild plants, fishing, and
hunting.
This food way was flexible enough to adapt to fluctuating
conditions. For example, if it was a bad year for crops or wild plants, Choctaw
communities relied more heavily on hunting and fishing to get their sustenance
and vice-versa. This month, Iti Fabvssa
presents some information about the Choctaw fall and winter hunts.
In the Choctaw calendar, the months after the agricultural
fields were harvested are known as Little Hunger Month and Big Hunger Month,
roughly corresponding with November and December. This is when Choctaw men
would leave the villages on an extended hunting trip known as Owachito (meaning big hunt).
The Owachito was so-named because it could last for months, and
take hunters over hundreds of miles of territory. Little and Big Hunger Months
received their names because Choctaw hunters would take limited, light-weight
food rations with them on the Owachito, and because fasting for spiritual
purification was an essential part of hunting. It was a hungry time of year.
The regions that Choctaws hunted in the fall and winter changed
over the years in connection with changes in the natural and political environment.
During the centuries before European contact, most of the ancestral Choctaw
population was concentrated in major farming communities located on the central
Tombigbee, the central Alabama, and the Black Warrior Rivers and also around
Mobile Bay.
The neutral ground between these communities was maintained as
hunting preserves. In response to European arrival, disease, and slaving raids,
Choctaw populations started to reorganize into communities located in what is
now east-central Mississippi and western Alabama.
In the early 1700s, these communities conducted winter hunts in
the Tombigbee River valley, the area just north and east of Mobile bay, and
also in what is now central Mississippi. Through the 1700s and early 1800s,
Choctaw communities and our neighbors, became increasingly involved in the hide
trade with European groups. Ultimately deer were hunted at an unsustainable
level and became rare in and around the Choctaw homeland. This compelled
hunters to travel still farther west on the Owachito.
By the 1750s, after making peace with the Chickasaw, if not
before, Choctaw hunting parties were traveling as far west as the bank of the
Mississippi river. Some of the names given by Choctaw hunters to places in this
area are still in use today, including Issaquena (from issi okhina, meaning “deer creek”) and Nita Yuma, probably meaning “bears are there”.
By the late 1760s, at the invitation of the Spanish governor,
some Choctaw people began moving into what is now Louisiana. By 1800, Choctaw
hunting parties were traveling all the way to present-day southern Oklahoma.
In fact, the Ouachita mountains may derive their name from the
Choctaw term “Owachito”. The familiarity that Choctaw hunters had with the west
was demonstrated when, in negotiations for the 1820 treaty of Doak’s Stand,
Chief Pushmataha drew out the course of the Canadian River and the upper part
of the Red River (between present-day Oklahoma and Texas) for future president
Andrew Jackson, whose aides had never been there before. For several decades,
Pushmataha and other Choctaw men had been traveling to this area, hunting,
encroaching on the territory of the Quapaw, Caddo, and Osage and fighting along
the way.
As alluded to above, deer were the main quarry of Choctaw
hunters on the Owachito. The Owachito was not the only time that deer were
hunted, but it was the main time. During the fall, deer were to be found in
largest numbers in patches of oak/hickory forest, eating fallen nuts and
acorns. Later in winter, they moved into dense cane breaks, where they were
harder to reach.
After deer, bear were the next-most important Choctaw game
animal. More essential than the bear meat itself, was the fat, which was
rendered into grease (see Illustration 2). During the 1600s, and up until about
1740, bison herds lived in the heart of the Choctaw homeland, and were
regularly hunted.
As Choctaw hunters moved west in the 1700s and early 1800s, they
continued to hunt small numbers of bison. From today’s perspective, we only
have partial glimpses of what life was like in a Choctaw hunting camp on the
Owachito. Able-bodied women may have been present, but primary sources speak of
men. We know that parities hunting in distant lands built temporary houses by
setting a line of posts in the ground, and then laying sheets of stripped bark
from the top of the posts down to the ground on each site. This created an “A”
frame-like structure. The ends, left open, had campfires burning near them to
keep the occupants warm. (see Illustration 1). Hunting was a spiritual
activity. In camp, hunters fasted and prepared themselves to go out and get
meat and other products for their community that was depending on them.
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Preparing smoked deer jerky. |
Iti Fabvssa - The Big Hunt
We know a little more about the hunting techniques that they
used. The surrounding was an ancient one, whereby hunters went out and
encircled herds of deer, sometimes with the use of fire. By the late 1700s,
deer were mostly being hunted through stalking. Sometimes, hunters used
elaborate decoys made from a stuffed deer head to get close enough to the
animals for a good shot. These hunters often walked 30 miles in a day in
stalking their query. When a successful hunter brought meat back to camp, it
was shared. The kidneys were cut up, distributed, and burned in the hunters’
fires as a way of giving thanks.
Meat was preserved by cutting it into strips and drying it over
a smokey fire. Hides were scraped fresh and then dried into rawhide for
transport. Fat was taken from the bear and rendered pure in a clay pot over the
fire. It was preserved by mixing it with sassafras root chips, and placing it
in a pot that had been buried in the cool ground up to its rim. Choctaws
probably transported the bear grease in containers made from sewn-up green deer
hides. Once emptied, the bags could be un-sewn and, already exposed to the bear
grease, would be ready for tanning. When it was time to head back home, hunters
would pack up the dried meat and other items on the back of their Choctaw
ponies. Two 50-pound packs would be suspended on each side of the horse, and a
third one set on top. For protection from rain, all would be covered by a hide.
When a hunting party returned to their village, it was a time of
joy and celebration, both because the men had made it home safely, and because
of the essential food and materials that they brought with them. Hunters are
said to have shared the bounty with their estranged wives and other households
that had no one to provide meat.
After spending some time in the village, hunters would again go
out in the heart of winter in search of animals with prime pelts. This was
during Koichito Hvshi and Koichusk Hvshi (Panther Month and Wildcat Month,
respectively), which roughly correspond with January and February. These month
names come from two of the animals that were hunted for peltry. Hunters would
set up temporary camps, sometimes with their women and children, in places
several miles from their village where they could easily access the swamps and
cane breaks where pelt-bearing animals lived during that time of year. Among
all of the Southeastern Tribes and European communities, Choctaw men were said
to be the best at the dangerous job of hunting panther and bear. Black bear
migrated into Choctaw country during late fall, to avoid colder temperatures to
the north.
Although bear were hunted on the Owachito, this later season
hunt was favored by Choctaw hunters because by December the bear were at their
fattest and they moved slowly. In hunting bear, hunters would go out into cane
break and look for a rotten, hollow tree showing signs that it was being used
as a bear den. They would build a fire at the base of the tree, causing the
rotten wood to smolder. Eventually, the bear would be awakened by the smoke and
forced to jump from the top of the trunk. Hunters would shoot the bear with
arrows in mid-air or on the ground. Choctaw oral stories indicate that hunting
dogs were also sometimes used to harass the bear.
The Owachito and the winter pelt hunt were dangerous, but
enjoyable times for Choctaw men. The hunts provided them with an opportunity to
show their skill and their spiritual efficacy. Through the hunts, they provided
their communities not only with animal protein, but also the raw materials such
as hides, tendons, antlers, horns, bison wool, glue stock, bones, and hooves
that Choctaw people used to make a variety of life-supporting implements,
structures, and tools.
Today’s Choctaw people who prepare themselves spiritually to go
into the woods in November, December, and January, to hunt for meat and other animal
products for their families are carrying on a very ancient and storied tribal
tradition.
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