Native American Style Chicken

February 21, 2010 by roostershamblin

As a small boy I spent lots of time around many different tribes of
indians, that dad was in farming partnerships with. They taught me the
traditional way they prepared food, when we had dinner with them.
Today I will discuss the way the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache prepared
their chicken before white settlement. First you make a small mound of
clean stones and flatten the top. Next you lay down three dressed
whole chickens on the pile of stones. Cover them with a large clay
flower pot. Build a fire around the flower pot and let the chicken
cook about three hours. The indians got chickens the same way they got
horses, from the spanish missons. Not every apache comanche or kiowa
was a farmer but many of them were. The ones that were not, traded for
chickens corn and beans. Often they would stuff their chickens with
prickly pear cactus before cooking. The cactus must be peeled, or
placed in the fire to remove the spines Now it is possible to
purchase cactus in the supermarket because of the large immagration
from mexico. Often with chicken they had mesquite meal bread. Mesquite
is in the same family as peas. Among their many culinary uses,
mesquite beans can be ground into a very nutritious, sweet, dense,
high protein, high fiber, gluten free flour that is far better for
people with diabetes than white flour. My dad was in the Dust Bowl
from age eight to fourteen. He said people mostly survived on rabbits
and mesquite beans on their way to California during the Dirty
Thirties. In western Oklahoma nothing would grow from 1930 to 1936. It
wasnt until 1940 that there was enough moisture to put in a crop. My
dad got a job planting shelter belts of trees, to slow down the wind
so plants could take root and grow. Now that the soil has sufficent
moisture for cover crops, most of the shelter belts have been removed
in western Oklahoma and Kansas. This was taken with thanks from the blog
roostershamblin