Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is a native shrub/small tree that can be found growing at the edge of forests and along riverbanks. In late summer and autumn, the drupes ripen to form clusters of velvety red berries that were sought after by Native Americans for their sourness. They used the dried and ground sumac as a seasoning and made a lemonade-like beverage with fresh berries. Indians also enjoyed smoking the dried berries in a pipe, a custom that they introduced to the Europeans— who, as a result, preferred it to the best Virginia tobacco.
In early spring, and then again in autumn, Woodland Indians left their communal villages to set up fishing camps along rivers. There they would erect portable wigwams and move about on canoes that were fashioned out of birchbark in the north and hollowed-out trees in the south. They fished in shallow waters with spears and built weirs to trap fish. At these seasonal camps, they also processed the fish by brining, drying, and smoking. Fish were dried by skewering on sticks and stuck into the ground around the cooler perimeters of a fire, or smoked on racks made of twigs that were propped above a smoldering fire. Fresh fish were roasted on aromatic planks of cedar, oak, alder, birch— or fried on hot rocks that were greased with bear fat.
At the time that the Europeans arrived, the rivers, lakes and streams of North America were said to be swarming with fish of countless species— some of which are lost to us now. In "The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell", Mark Kurlansky states " The rivers and streams had so many fish— striped bass, sturgeon, shad, drum fish, carp, perch, pike, and trout— that they could be yanked out of the water by hand."
In appalling contrast, Cormac McCarthy describes a post-apocalyptic North America in his novel "The Road", in which the earth is inexplicably scorched and unimaginably barren. The story deals with themes of survival and morality, addressing questions like Who are we when we have nothing left to lose?, or How long can we survive when the earth no longer provides food or water? In the very last paragraph he writes a provocative passage that seems wrought with Indian sensibility and wisdom:
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber currents where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."
Trout: Sour, Sweet, Smoky
hot stone-seared, sumac and young cress
cold smoked, birch syrup glaze
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