Last week I was engaged in several conversations on Choctaw history, culture and foods. In the past I have done columns on their culture and am still researching the Choctaw Trail of Tears, a segment of which passed through northwest Starkville. I have not, though, written specifically about the foods and dinnerware of the Choctaws.
The Choctaw of the early 1800s, as represented those living in what is now the Starkville-Columbus area, were a civilized, cultured people. This was reflected in their dining. While the foods and preparation were mostly traditional, serving pieces were forks, spoons and knives along with English Staffordshire plates, bowls and pitchers. One account from 1822 even mentioned “a neat linen” spread over the dinner table.
A staple of the Choctaw diet was corn. Different types of corn were planted including a “flint or flour corn” that contained both white and blue kernels. According to John Swanton in his Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians, that corn was used for roasting ears. Swanton also mentioned that the Choctaws had popcorn.
The corn was also used to make cornbread or fry bread. Corn would be ground up in a wooden mortar. Lye made from the ashes of bean pods, corn silk or oak would be used in making tomfullah a corn mush or in making hominy. Other vegetables included beans, squash and pumpkin. Vegetables were sometimes stored in split cane hampers. Sweet potatoes were very popular. Hickory nuts were cracked, ground and boiled to extract their oil. The oil was then sometimes used for flavoring corn.
In Captain John Stuart’s 1831 publication of A Sketch of the Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, Stuart stated that the Indians raised cattle, hogs, some sheep and poultry. Wild game was also hunted. Venison marinated in honey was a popular meat recipe.
The property inventory in the 1836 Lowndes County estate file of Tisha Homa, a Choctaw captain, included a list of cooking and dining utensils. They included two brass kettles, two pots, an oven, nine plates, a pitcher, a tin pan, a water bucket and a set of knives and forks. By 1800 Choctaws were eating off of English made dinner plates with their traditional pottery used as an utilitarian ware. Some use of pewter plates continued into the early 1800s.
Surface collections from three c1810 to 1832 Choctaw house sites in Lowndes County show a wide range of mostly Staffordshire English earthenware cups, bowls and plates. Transfer printed pieces in blue, red, black and brown were popular. There were fragments of hand painted dinnerware of blue and white and of multicolored small floral patterns. Blue “shell” edge decorated wares were also popular. I have found fragments of a plate and a vegetable bowl made by James Clews of Staffordshire, England between 1825 and 1834 on two different Choctaw sites. The pattern is Lafayette Landing at Castle Garden New York. They are a dark blue transfer-printed earthenware. The Choctaw dinnerware was as nice if not better than dinnerware used in Columbus at the same time.
What was it like to dine with local Choctaw Indians in the 1820s? Such a dinner was described by a Mr. Hood, a missionary from the Mayhew Choctaw Mission. In 1822 he dined with Moshulitubbee, one of the principal Choctaw chiefs and described his meal: “On entering the room I was not a little surprised to see a table set in so much order. A neat linen was spread over the table and on it was some of the fatted ox, well cooked. Also, sweet potatoes, corn bread, imported tea, and wild honey. The only thing that was Choctaw was a large native bowl of tomfullah (a corn mush), with two spoons made of the horns of a buffalo… Having seated ourselves, the king, through his interpreter, desired me to ask a blessing.” It was a meal not that different from one served in any Columbus home of that time.
The Preservation Society of Columbus announced that an event “Lunch and Learn: The Native American Experience” which is part of the Columbus Pilgrimage Jubilee of Homes will include “a lunch of Native American cuisine.”
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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