Diet, North American Native, Before "The Horse Culture"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nez_Perce_warrior_on_horse.jpg

Recently, diet of the North American Native, before the start of European settlement, and before the "horse culture", has been the subject of major research. Coprolite research: dried human faeces--represent an extraordinarily direct line of dietary evidence. When found during archaeological exploration, they are just dry fibrous lumps that have little discernible smell, but each lump can tell a day-in-the-life story when properly studied back in the lab.

So come on people--let's get real--

plants-- 

 NOT MEAT  were the dietary mainstay.

It is impossible to envision peoples, reliant on meat, of any kind, surviving to age thirty, or the life expectancy at the time (a strictly lean meat diet will quickly kill any animal on earth). 


Woman and children would have harvested most of the plants, especially those requiring labour-intensive gathering and processing such as berries, cat-tails/bull-rushes, chick-weed, onions, and other bulbs and roots. But this stereotypical division of labour masks much of the food that was gathered and eaten. On daily rounds, anyone able and hungry, would have been on the lookout for anything easily acquired. While venison (moose meat is venison) supplied an estimated 40-50% of the total meat (and usable skins for that matter), the animal bones came from many different critters. Most of them were relatively small animals that were probably trapped, snared, netted, or knocked on the head with a stick, rather than brought down with an arrow or spear.

Beaver, Muskrat, porcupine, ground squirrels, prairie-dogs, rabbits--would you eat one of these little critters? The North American Natives did and our pioneer ancestors did; they were  very glad to have them;these meats are much healthier tham the highly procesed meat products we commonly consume today. http://al-alex-alexander-d-girvan.blogspot.com/2010/02/building-of-canada-another-excerpt-from.html

Beaver, Muskrat, porcupine, ground squirrels, prairie-dogs, rabbits, skunk. Were all specially targeted (rabbit pelts were woven in to blankets and robes which were softer, just as warm, and a lot less labour-intensive than bison robes or pillows).

Researches have found plant fibres make up most of the volume of every coprolite that has been studied and that plants constituted at least 75% of the native North American diet.
© Al (Alex-Alexander) D. Girvan. All rights reserved