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30
fourteen oxen pulling a hundred-pound
Ibid., 206.
31
more than a hundred daily trains
John F. Stover, “Railroads,” in
The Reader’s Companion to American History,
Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 906-10.
32
author Ann Vileisis
Ann Vileisis,
Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back
(Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2008), 15.
32
converted cotton plantations
Ibid., 38.
32
spectacular price of five dollars
Thomas F. De Voe,
The Market Assistant
(New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), 160.
32
the quickly vanishing Long Island grouse
Vileisis,
Kitchen Literacy,
60.
32
measured them by the cord and ton
Ronald L. Westemeier, “The History of Prairie-Chickens and Their Management in Illinois,” in
Selected Papers in Illinois History, 1983,
Robert McCluggage, ed. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1985), 20.
33
had fallen to fifty cents
De Voe,
The Market Assistant,
161.
33
insulated shipping barrels
Westemeier, “The History of Prairie-Chickens,” 20.
33
“chicken hunting culture
” Ross H. Hier, “History and Hunting the Greater Prairie Chicken: A Rich Tradition,” in
The Greater Prairie Chicken: A National Look,
W. Daniel Svedarsky, Ross H. Hier, and Nova J. Silvy, eds. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1999), 163-67.
33
the
Prairie-Chicken
Westemeier, “The History of Prairie-Chickens,” 21.
33
killed and shipped to market
Bereman, “The Boom of the Prairie-Chicken,” 32.
33
“a Christmas present of prairie chickens”
SLC to Critchell, Dec. 26-31, 1879, Hartford, CT,
www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=letters/UCCL12963.xml;style=letter;brand=mtp
accessed July 30, 2009.
33
Prairie Chickens
“Aunt Babette’s” Cook Book
(Cincinnati: Block, 1889), 90.
35
applying ammonium nitrate
Pollan,
The Omnivore’s Dilemma,
41-44.
35
cultivated redtop grass
Scott Simpson, personal communication, Dec. 22, 2006. See also Simpson, “Prairie Chickens: Promoting a Population ‘Boom,’” 22.
35
land going “corn sick”
Betty Fussell,
The Story of Corn
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 154-64.
36
“differences betwixt clear-water rivers”
Mark Twain,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1885; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 and 2001), 112-13.
36
“her hurricane deck would be worth”
Twain,
Life on the Mississippi,
258.
36
six bushels of earth for every bushel of corn
Benyus,
Biomimicry,
15.
37
modern monocultures still shadow
Madson,
Where the Sky Began,
20.
37
ordered a roasted prairie chicken
Mark Twain, “Sociable Jimmy,”
New York Times,
Nov. 29, 1874; reprinted in Shelley Fisher Fishkin,
Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African-American Voices
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 20.
37
the first seeds of Huckleberry Finn’s
Ibid., entire volume.
38
“divine place for wading”
Twain,
Autobiography,
7.
38
To Choose a Young
Mary Newton Foote Henderson,
Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877), 184.
43
Prairie-Chicken or Grouse
Ibid.
45
the Eiffel Tower had been built
Mark Twain, “‘Was the World Made for Man?’” in
Collected Tales, 1891-1910,
576.
2. A BARREL OF ODDS AND ENDS: POSSUM AND RACCOON
51
In 1625, a muster
James Deetz,
Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 22-23.
52
Joy of Cooking
Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker,
Joy of Cooking,
4th ed. (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1963), 454.
52
“just as tasty as squirrel”
Angus Cameron and Judith Jones,
The L.L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook
(New York: Random House, 1983), 123.
53
“I remember the ’coon and ’possum hunts”
Twain,
Autobiography,
19.
53
“hungry, thirsty, tired”
De Voe,
The Market Assistant,
127.
54
their Algonquin name,
aroughcun
Dorcas MacClintock,
A Natural History of Raccoons
(Caldwell, NJ: Blackburn Press, 2002), 1.
54
the skin on its paws softens
Ibid., 14.
54
A tapetum lucidum
Ibid., 18.
54
tagged one blind raccoon with a radio
Ibid., 20.
54
one two-hundred-pound hunter
Ibid., 30.
55
twenty times
as many raccoons
Humane Society Web site,
www.hsus.org
, accessed Jan. 18, 2009.
56
knew more about growing rice
Judith A. Carney,
Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). See also Karen Hess,
The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992).
56
The farmers pierced each earthwork
Carney,
Black Rice,
17-19, 87-89.
56
“growing their crops on the riverain deposits”
Ibid., 18.
56
French ships carried seed rice
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall,
Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 59.
56
“accustomed to the planting of rice”
Robert L. Hall, “Food Crops, Medicinal Plants, and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in
African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture,
Anne L. Bower, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 23.
57
white farmers from slaveholding states like Virginia
R. Douglas Hurt,
Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri’s Little Dixie
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), xii-6.
58
“a faithful and affectionate good friend”
Twain,
Autobiography,
7-8.
58
“all the negroes were friends of ours”
Ibid., 7.
58
“entered a dense wood”
Twain,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,
63.
58
“as well as anyone”
Ibid., 204.
58
vitally important mental maps
Rhys Isaac,
The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 52-53.
59
“blacks understood the advantage”
Maria Franklin, “The Archaeological and Symbolic Dimensions of Soul Food: Race, Culture and Afro-Virginian Identity,” in
Race and the Archaeology of Identity,
Charles Orser, ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001), 96.
59
a reputation among some whites
Ibid., 99.
59
the few unwatched hours they had
Jessica Harris,
The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cookery
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 26.
59
“procure supplies of such things”
Charles Bell,
Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Bell, a Black Man
(New York: John S. Taylor, 1837), 261-80.
60
profusion of “rackoon”
C. B. [Frederick] Marryat,
Second Series of a Diary in America, with Remarks on Its Institutions
(1839; Philadelphia: T. K. & P. G. Collins, 1840), 36.
60
“both alive and dead”
De Voe,
The Market Assistant,
127.
60
Virginia’s Rich Neck Plantation
Franklin, “The Archaeological and Symbolic Dimensions of Soul Food,” 100; for a Louisiana example, see Elizabeth Scott, “Some Thoughts on African-American Foodways,”
Newsletter of the African-American Archaeological Network,
no. 22, Fall 1998.
60
“there is scarce anything [the people] do not eat”
Anne Yentsch,
A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 198.
60
obvious raccoon analogue called the grasscutter
J. C. Monroe, personal communication, Jan. 15, 2009.
60
throughout the African diaspora
John Martin Taylor,
Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 144.
60
“Oh! I was fond of ’possums”
Franklin, “The Archaeological and Symbolic Dimensions of Soul Food,” 102.
60
“Sometimes de boys would go down in the woods”
Ibid., 99.
61
Possum Roasted
Martha McCulloch-Williams,
Dishes & Beverages of the Old South
(New York: McBride, Nast, 1913), 175.
64
Cutting up meat with an ax
James Deetz,
In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life,
2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1996), 171.
65
Homaro Cantu at Chicago’s Moto restaurant
Megan Twohey, “Raccoon Dinner: Who’s Game?”
Chicago Tribune,
Jan. 18, 2008.
66
250 carcasses
Ibid.
66
the Soulard Farmer’s Market in St. Louis
Chad Garrison, “Eat More Beaver,”
Riverfront Times,
Jan. 5, 2005.
66
a volume of essays
Gillett, Arkansas: Celebrating 100 Years,
John Cover, ed. (Gillett Centennial Celebration Committee, 2006).
67
“Arkansas’ outstanding ceremonial feast”
“The Possum Club of Polk County, Arkansas,” in
The Food of a Younger Land,
Mark Kurlansky, ed. (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 151.1.
68
Stuffing for a Suckling Pig
Rufus Estes,
Good Things to Eat, as Suggested by Rufus
(Chicago: Rufus Estes, 1911), 43.
69
“The way that the things were cooked”
Twain,
Autobiography,
5.
69
“big broad, open, but roofed”
Twain,
Huckleberry Finn,
276.
70
widely dispersed customs
Yentsch,
A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves,
210.
71
West Africans made vegetable relishes
Leland Ferguson,
Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650-1800
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 94.
71
corn, as on the Gold Coast, or yams,
Yentsch,
A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves,
197.
71
shared six major cooking techniques
Harris,
The Welcome Table,
21.
71
African banjos
Deetz,
In Small Things Forgotten,
178.
71
Yoruba
to-gun
J. Michael Vlach, “Shotgun Houses,”
Natural History
87, no. 2 (1977), 50-57; cited in Deetz,
In Small Things Forgotten,
215.
72
the chicken was so familiar to many Africans
Franklin, “The Archaeological and Symbolic Dimensions of Soul Food,” 104. See also Yentsch,
A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves,
203.
72
replacing the dried shrimp
Harris, cited in Yentsch,
A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves,
202.
72
maize was well known in regions
Hall, “Food Crops, Medicinal Plants, and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” 27.
72
increasingly offered poor cuts
Yentsch,
A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves,
234.
72
Guinea hens, the African fowl
Edna Lewis,
The Taste of Country Cooking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 159.
72
the Kongo word
nguba
Hall, “Food Crops, Medicinal Plants, and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” 32.
73
“Sometimes I’ve set right down and eat
with
him”
Twain,
Tom Sawyer,
200.
73
“barrel of odds and ends”
Twain,
Huckleberry Finn,
2.
73
colonoware pots made by some slaves
Ferguson,
Uncommon Ground,
18-32.
74
“I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday”
Twain,
Huckleberry Finn,
154-55.
74
now a cotton plantation
Twain,
Autobiography,
5.
75
“scalded like a pig”
De Voe,
The Market Assistant,
129.
75
“Ef dey’s anyt’ing dat riles me”
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “Possum,” first appeared in
Howdy Honey Howdy
(New York: Dodd & Mead, 1905); quoted in O’Neill,
American Food Writing,
132-33.
79
“hardly to be discerned”
Edward Winslow,
Mourt’s Relation: A Journey of the Pilgrims at Plymouth
(1622; Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1963), 43.
79
“Bear I abominate”
Marryat,
A Diary in America,
37.
3. MASTERPIECE OF THE UNIVERSE: TROUT AT LAKE TAHOE
83
“balloon voyages”
Twain,
Roughing It,
153.
84
“[We] toiled laboriously up a mountain”
Ibid., 147-48.
84
“too much dish-rag”
Ibid., 24.
85
“winging about in the emptiness”
Ibid., 154.
85
“As the great darkness closed down”
Ibid., 148.
85
a slave murdered on a whim
Powers,
Mark Twain,
37-38.

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