Harvesting & Cooking Ethnobotany

1. Cooking plants the PNW Way

2. •For thousands and thousands of years, Native ancestors ate healthy, wholesome foods. Salish cuisine is a prime example of that. •The Pacific Northwest is known by indigenous peoples for its natural bounty, spanning from the rich mountain forests and salmon-filled rivers to the vast abundance of seafoods provided by Mother Ocean. Such a wide nutritional variety paves the way for a cuisine that is distinctly Salish.

3. Harvesting your food • Digging stick were used to pry roots and clams from the earth, digging sticks are an indispensable tool for any forager. These digging sticks are hand carved from native Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia), one of the toughest woods in the Pacific Northwest and the traditional material of choice among Aboriginal root diggers.

4. Digging Sticks • Digging sticks are made from the hardest and toughest material available. Historically Indigenous People west of the Cascades preferred yew or oceanspray wood, while those living east of the Cascades preferred serviceberry, hawthorn, mock orange, and oak. The tips of all wooden digging sticks are carefully sharpened, fire hardened, and rubbed with tallow to form resilient, waterproof points. • Digging sticks are usually three to four feet long, or roughly the length of the root gardener’s leg. Top handles are made either of the same wood, or occasionally of antler.

5. Baskets for Cooking & Everything else Form & Function Traditionally, the Coast Salish wove a wide variety of baskets to serve many purposes, including gathering, storing, and preparing food; holding household goods; transporting objects; and protecting their infants. Gathering baskets were commonly used to gather roots, berries, shellfish and other foods. Some gathering baskets had leather loops or carrying straps enabling the user's hands to remain free. Berry baskets were sometimes soft and flexible, so the basket could be folded and stored when not in use Large storage basket with lid made of coiled cedar over cedar slats and imbricated in black, red, and yellow designs.

6. • Coastal Salish Materials & Techniques to make baskets • Common basketry materials included beargrass, cedar bark, cedar root, spruce root, cattail leaves and tule. Elements used for decoration included maidenhair fern stems, horsetail root, red cherry bark and a variety of grasses which offered weavers a variety of colors, textures, and sheens, which they used for artistic effect. Additionally, some materials were dyed before they were used. Shades of red, yellow, blue, purple, green, brown, and black were obtainable from local plants, animals, and minerals. Coiling, plaiting and twining were the three main techniques applied by Coast Salish basket-makers. • Coiled baskets were created by coiling a foundation material such as split roots, then piercing the coils with an awl and stitching them together with another material. Cooking baskets were often coiled, as it was possible to create a watertight container with the technique.

7. • After a quick dusting to remove the largest clumps of sediment, the gardener places the root or clam in an open-work basket. This basket is never far from the digger and more roots or clams are harvested until the basket is full. The open weave of the basket allows dirt and sand to fall freely, and in some instances, the basket is submerged partially in water and shaken, like a colander, to rinse off any remaining dirt. • Thus cleaned, the roots or clams are ready to be cooked or dried. Open-work baskets like this one were made of pealed cedar roots twined with split cedar strips. They were attached to woven tumplines, used as head or shoulder straps, and filled with clams or roots that could be rinsed, allowing the sandy water to run out.

8. Burden Basket Burden basket of cherry bark and cedar root with a woven carrying strap or tumpline. Would have been used to carry loads of food or other materials on back using a forehead trumpline to distribute weight.

9. Food gathering and preparation is a central aspect of traditional knowledge

10. • Food, including meats and vegetables, were baked, steamed, or boiled without the use of pots or pans. Instead, they heated rocks in the fire then put the hot rocks into a cedar box or basket full of water, which would boil the water and cook the food. • The women prepared fish in two ways: some fish was eaten fresh, but most of it was dried and saved for the winter months.

11. Salmon Smokehouse

13. Canada Canada’ ’s Original Cooking Vessel s Original Cooking Vessel Bentwood box cooking, as was found among the First Nations of coastal British Columbia, is Canada’s only indigenous cooking method. From pre-history the boxes, skilfully made with planks of red cedar, were used for family meals or the most elaborate feasts. Often ornately decorated and of many various sizes, they also were used for storage and even, at times, for burial.

14. Cooking • Bentwood box cooking was the work of the women and they took great pride in it. Depending on the size of the meal at least two of these handmade boxes were filled with water to soak and tighten for 3 – 4 days Bentwood Box Cooking before cooking. • Four to five hours before cooking, a fire was lit on the shore and potato-sized beach rocks were placed into it. They absorbed the heat of the constantly tended fire. The rocks had to be dense and compact. If not, they could fracture violently when placed into the box to heat cold sea water, blowing apart the painstakingly made cedar box.

15. • The rocks that did not split were precious and were saved in a cedar basket to be used over and over again. • A branch of alder, a soft, pliable tree that is used often today for smoking salmon, was cut. With a stone knife, it was then split part way up, making a pair of rudimentary tongs

16. • The hot rocks were then picked up with the split alder branch, washed in the first of two boxes and placed in the second with fresh water. • Franz Boas, the anthropologist who studied the coastal First Nations from 1880 – 1920, described how, in the springtime, the tender shoots of the salmon berry bush were added to the water for flavouring. In mere moments the water foamed and boiled. • Seafood was added — prawns, scallops, clams, chunks of salmon, cod or snowy white halibut– and a woven mat was placed over to hold the steam.

17. • Over the centuries other foods also have been cooked in the bentwood box, notably a wild berry “jam”. Salal, a member of the Heather family was one of the most relished. Crushed salal berries were added to the box and small, hot pebbles were arranged in a layer on top. More berries are added and the hot small stones were stirred into the liquid bringing it to a boil and thickening it. • More berries are added and the small stones were stirred into the liquid bringing it to a boil and thickening it. While the contents of the box was cooking, a wooden rack was made and placed over a fire.

18. • Layers of skunk cabbage leaves (Lysichitum americanum), also known today as “Indian waxed paper” were arranged on top. The salal berry mixture, minus the stones, was then transferred to small four-sided cedar containers set on the leaves. There the fruit would dry to a leathery consistency before being stored in another bentwood box.