Those Old-Timey Foods
Here are the most common foods of the mid-continent pioneers: leather britches, corn, wild fruits, like strawberries and fox grapes dried as raisins, wild persimmons, etc.
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leather britches, dried corn and dried apple rings
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by VICTOR A. CROLEY
RELATED CONTENT
Mid-continent pioneers were mainly English, Scots and Irish
whose fathers had followed Boone from the Piedmont across
the Appalachian mountains into Tennessee and Kentucky.
There, when the war of 1812 broke out, sons and footloose
males enlisted to march and fight in Canada. Returning from
this fruitless and ill-timed venture, the soldiers were
rewarded with land grant bonuses in the newly-opened
Arkansas Territory. Many married, started a family and
moved west. Some intermarried with the civilized Indian
nations—the Cherokees and Creeks—of the Big
Smokies.
These pioneers were familiar with wilderness living and at
home on the sparsely settled. frontiers of our growing
country. Already many, like Boone, were beginning to feel
crowded and in need of elbow room and fresh scenery.
The men were hunters and trappers for the most part. Game
was plentiful and meat could be had for the shooting at
almost every cabin door. Their cash crops were bear skins,
bear bacon and bear grease which was used for lubrication,
for cooking, as a butter substitute and to slick down
rebellious hair. But mainly the frontiersmen were
self-sufficient: They mined lead for balls for their
muzzle-loading rifles; they made gunpowder from powdered
charcoal, sulphur and the saltpeter found in bat caves.
Wives and mothers were capable gardeners and had brought
with them bean, pumpkin, turnip and a few other vegetable
seeds. And, of course, flowers. They had zinnias, which
they called "Old Maids", and balsam, which they knew as
"Touch-me-nots" and a living sucker of purple lilac which
soon flourished at every cabin door.
Many of the early arrivals came on foot, with pack horses
or driving heavy-laden cows. Some even trundled their few
household goods in wheelbarrows along the forest traits.
Roads, over which oxen could draw covered wagons, had yet
to be cleared. Under these conditions, space was at a
premium and food supplies had to be light in weight and
easily portable. Modern methods of canning in glass jars
were still unknown and the diet of fresh meat was
supplemented by foods the pioneer wife could preserve by
drying. She was amazingly adept at this, and quick to learn
new techniques from the Indian women who were her
neighbors.
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