An Early Thanksgiving

While most Americans will sit down to a Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, Nov. 24, Dr. Ella Sekatau and her tribe of Narragansett Indians celebrated their Thanksgiving at an Indian Harvest festival meal on Oct. 2.

“In fact, we have a thanksgiving harvest festival every 28 days or so,” says Sekatau, the medicine woman for her southern New England tribe. “Our people have been doing this for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.”

Other such harvest meals include a spring strawberry festival at corn planting time, a summer green bean and corn festival when the first squashes, string beans and corn are ready for eating, and in August, a green corn festival in which fresh fish are baked over seaweed and coals on the beach.

At the October Thanksgiving meal, Sekatau, her seven children, 26 grandchildren and other tribe members sit down, like other Americans, to a meal of turkey, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes. But they gather as a community to eat in the Inland Long House where, in past times, several families settled together for the cold winter.

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“Traditionally the October Thanksgiving meal took place after the hunting parties had brought in fresh meat, and the fruit, vegetables and fish were dried and stored for the winter,” she says. “At all these festivals the Indians expressed thanksgiving to the Great Spirit and the Earth Mother.”

In addition to enjoying the meal together, adults and children dress in deerskin clothes and perform Narragansett dances around an outdoor fire. As medicine woman, Sekatau (“Firefly,” “Song of Wine,” “She Who Is in Mourning” are her translated Narragansett names) stands in the center of the dancers. Her face is decorated with white and red theatrical paint over her nose and under her eyes representing the spiritual and the living worlds. The black tattoo on her left cheek represents her turtle clan, a sign of one of the Narragansett royal families. She wears a copper bracelet, American glass beads, Indian acorns and a black wampum (quahog) necklace. An eagle and a duck feather protrude from behind her black, braided hair.

Born in South County, R.I., Sekatau spends most of her time teaching the language, arts and culture of her heritage to thousands of children each year in southern New England.

“My purpose is to re-educate Americans about the cultures existing in North America in the early 1600s and 1700s,” she said.

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The month prior to Thanksgiving she is especially busy helping schoolchildren better understand what the first Thanksgiving of the Pilgrims was really like. The Pilgrims of the 17th Century first learned the foodways in their new land from the Native Americans.

“The Narragansett or Bay Indians,” adds Sekatau, “date back thousands of years in South County.” Today, about 3,000 recognized Narragansetts live in southern New England.

For the early Indians, dinner was the only formal meal of the day. Instead, they ate whenever they were hungry--savoring newly picked berries in the spring, munching on dried fruit and vegetables in the winter or tasting the stew or fish chowder nearly always cooking in the fireplace.

During the evening the entire family ate together out of a communal bowl. Each person would use his own scoop-like spoon made from hard wood or an animal horn. First the father, then the grandparents, then the children, and finally the mother scooped their food.

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According to Roger Williams in his “Key into the Language of North America,” written in 1643, the food was so abundant in the unpolluted waters of Narragansett Bay and off Cape Cod that Indian women merely waded out to gather lobsters, clams, oysters and quahogs. The story goes that the Pilgrims were so shocked when a green lobster emerged bright red from boiling water that they called it “the Devils’ doin’.”

The Pilgrims also ate eels, mackerel, cod, herring, haddock, flounder, sturgeon and salmon--all of which were plentiful. Shellfish flavored their food, which was otherwise relatively bland by our standards. In winter they ate smoked dried fish unless someone was industrious enough to dig a hole in the ice to catch a fresh fish.

Some of their other foods included turkey, venison, seal, pigeon, duck, raccoons, rabbit, skunk cabbage, wild rice, Jerusalem artichokes, cucumbers, melons, corn, beans and squash. The Indians called the last-named the “three sisters” since they were planted at the same time. The beans would wind their stalks around the corn and the squash would run between the corn hills. Strawberries, cranberries, beach plums, swamp apples, grapes and maple sugar were all plentiful.

With no olive or vegetable oil, the Indians used porcupine, bear, black walnut and seal oil for cooking. They even used seal oil in summer as a protection against sunburn and mosquitoes, and in winter as an insulator against cold. Spices native to the area included wild pepperseeds, wild onion and bay leaf. Sassafras and pumpkin seed teas were considered sure cures for kidney infections, while cranberry juice, and rosehip and pine needle teas provided the necessary Vitamin C in their diet.

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Of all these foods by far the most important to the Indians were corn and beans. Women scraped the kernels from the cobs with their fingers and bonescrapers, and then ground the corn into meal. They also parched the corn in ashes to make nokehick (pronounced no-ki-hick). Carried in corn pouches on long journeys, the corn formed a kind of patty when cold water was added. A person could subsist on three spoonfuls of nokehick per day when necessary, although when the men went hunting they carried a pouch containing dehydrated fruit, dried venison, huckleberries and nokehick.

Out of cornmeal they made Indian pudding and Johnnycakes. With no leavening agents, the cakes were cooked on flat stones and were similar to flat, unleavened bread. Somehow, through the years, the English, perhaps confusing nokehick with these cakes, called them “journey cakes,” which became Johnnycakes.

At the harvest festival, Sekatau dips her Johnnycake, as we would crackers, into quahog chowder. In addition, she substitutes them for bread crumbs in her recipe for oyster stuffing for turkey. Her menu often includes squash dishes and Johnnycakes in which she uses cream, butter and salt, items omitted in traditional recipes.

JOHNNYCAKES

1 cup white stone-ground cornmeal

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 cup boiling water

1/2 cup medium cream or half and half

Corn oil and butter for frying

In bowl mix together cornmeal, salt and maple syrup. Add boiling water and mix well. Thin down batter with cream. Batter should be thick and not runny.

Drop batter by tablespoonfuls onto medium-hot and well-greased griddle or skillet. Let stand 6 minutes. Turn Johnnycakes over and continue cooking about 5 minutes more. Makes 8 to 10 Johnnycakes.

Note : Indians also prepared Johnnycakes substituting 1 cup clams or quahogs and juice for syrup and cream.

NARRAGANSETT OYSTER STUFFING

1 pound pork sausage or other type

4 large onions

2 batches Johnnycakes, or 5 cups crumbled corn bread, or 4 cups cooked wild or brown rice, or 1 pound boiled Jerusalem artichokes, cut up

1/2 pound fresh grapes, or 1 cup raisins

2 unpeeled diced apples

1/4 cup cranberries

1 1/2 teaspoons seafood seasoning or to taste

2 cups oysters with juice

Dice sausage and brown with onions in heavy saucepan over medium heat, about 5 minutes.

Mix together Johnnycakes or selected filling with grapes, apples, cranberries and seafood seasoning. Mix well. Add oysters with juice.

Either stuff turkey with filling or cook in covered flame-proof casserole in pan of water alongside turkey, basting occasionally with turkey drippings. Makes enough stuffing for 1 (20-pound) turkey.

ROASTED ACORN OR BUTTERNUT SQUASH

3 acorn or butternut squashes

3/4 cup brown sugar or maple sugar, loosely packed

1 bay leaf, crumbled

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg or to taste

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon or to taste

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves or to taste

2 tablespoons butter

Cut squashes in half, remove seeds and spread each half liberally with brown sugar. Sprinkle with crumbled bay leaf and nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. Dot with pieces of butter. Place squash on baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees 30 to 45 minutes until done. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Note : Squash can be cooked on outdoor grill or Indian-style at edge of fire pit, turning frequently to insure even cooking.