Customer Reviews

Feasting and Fasting with Lewis & Clark: A Food and Social History of the Early 1800s

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful book: large format, well-illustrated in both black and white and color, and a veritable feast of information on what the men of the Lewis and Clark expedition ate and how they cooked it.

The book begins with several chapters about 1800 technology for hunting, cooking, preserving food, nutritional illnesses, and L and C's organization of the messes to keep their 32 men fed daily. It then proceeds onward to describe the expedition, always in terms of what the men ate from day to day and how it was cooked. There were the good times when they feasted on buffalo [...] and the bad times when they had little at all. There is much here about Indian foods, recipes (which usually include bear fat -- also useful for repelling mosquitos), salmon fishing, salt, and the infirmities the men of the expedition suffered as a result of their diet, excesses, and shortages of food.

A third section goes into the foods, meals, and menus of the expedition. It lists the animals killed by the members of the expedition, especially by George Drouillard, a half-breed Indian hunter: 1048 deer, 259 buffalo, 193 Indian dogs, and everything else including one lonely fox. They liked beaver tail and buffalo [...]-- and didn't like pronghorn. All together they ate six pounds of meat per day per man. Menus of their feasts with Indian tribes are included: Teton Sioux, September 26, 1804, "Cooked dog -- the Sioux like theirs raw -- Pemmican, ground potato (good)."

The detail in this book is astonishing; a million little facts about food along the way enliven the text -- a brief passage asks whether L and C ate candles in desperation and another describes the "Pawpaw malady" that mysteriously caused illness among their men. If you are interested in Lewis and Clark, food, cooking, Indians, edible plants, hunting or the early West this is a superb book.

Smallchief

I bought this book at the Charlie Russell Museum in Great Falls while on vacation and ended up reading it every night before bed. Even if you dont like history or know nothing of L@C you will find tons of interesting facts on nutrition, health, survival. Truly a must for American history fans. It really completes the L@C story.