The History of our Public Schools
Wyandotte County, Kansas

 

 

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The Story of Kansas City, Kansas

"Food"

Early Wyandots had no supermarkets with their handy carts and neat packages of food on the shelves.  The mill at Shawnee, miles away, supplied the people with flour.  Silas Armstrong contracted with a firm, probably in Westport, to furnish meat.  Good shots among the men brought down a deer now and then as a treat for their families.  From the Delawares, the Wyandots obtained hominy, potatoes, fruit, and a little butter.  After the first year or two they raised their own food.

[Annotation:  Native American Food and Recipes] 
[Annotation:  Recipes by Type of Dish are broken down into three categories:
1. [Bold Font] All Indigenous Ingredients & Preparation
2. [Normal Font] Traditional Recipes with Contemporary Ingredients
3. [Italics Font] Today's Native Dishes
"The name DELAWARE was given to the people who lived along the Delaware River, and the river in turn was named after Lord de la Warr, the governor of the Jamestown colony. The name Delaware later came to be applied to almost all Lenape people. In our language, which belongs to the Algonquian language family, we call ourselves LENAPE (len-NAH-pay) which means something like "The People."  - You might want to check some of the recipes for the food/recipes link that has the word Lenape beside them. Similar food preparation may have taken place in the Wyandotte County, KS area.]

One family mentioned having dined on parsnips and pork.  On a Friday the thirteenth the Walkers "luxuriated in a dish of oyster stew."  Hominy, a form of corn, was a popular food.

Wyandot farmers respected superstitions about planting crops.  If they set out apple trees in the dark of the moon, they worried about how well the trees would bear.  A man who began to plow his field on Friday could expect rain to stop him before the day was over.  Watermelons planted when the moon was dark were watched carefully to see what influence it would have on their growth.

Return to Index for "The Story of Kansas City, Kansas" by Nellie McGuinn

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Contact the History Webmaster - Patricia Adams

History Site created on December 02, 2002
Page last updated: 02-Jan-2012