Traveling Resource Trunks

Food: Gathering Wild Plants

Suggested Adaptations for Puzzles from the Past: Problem Solving Through Archeology

Trunk Images and Objects Useful in teaching about gathering wild plants:
(More detailed information can be found on the back of the images or on object cards or stratigraphy cards for the objects.)

Graphic #3 - Sketch of a Wichita village showing gardens in the foreground and a flat-topped platform that probably served as a drying rack.

Graphic #4 - Photograph of a Wichita homestead of the 1890s. A flat-topped drying rack is shown near the right hand side of the photo.

Graphic #12 - Sketch of a Pawnee village showing its location near a river. The cattails in the foreground would have been a food source during the year.

Trash Filled Storage Pit (peach colored stratigraphy card) - Photograph and cross section sketch of a pit created for storing dried food.

Scapula Hoe Blade - This is a bison scapula that has been worked for use as a hoe blade. It has been sharpened and part of the bone has been removed from the length of the underside of it. This tool was so effective that many people preferred to continue using it long after metal hoe blades were available through trade.

Digging Stick Tip - This tip was made from a leg bone (tibia) of a bison. It would have been attached to a stick and used for planting seeds and cultivating crops.

Gathering wild fruits, berries, and other plant foods from the Plains supplemented a diet of meat, and provided a good source of nutrition. When the bison hunt or the corn crop failed, or did not provide as much food as needed, gathering sustained tribes for short periods of time.

Many different kinds of berries were picked from short bushes growing among the thick Plains grass. Plums, strawberries, cattails, onions, water chestnuts, and other edible plants could be found on the Kansas plains. Delicacies included tiny wild strawberries and plums. Some were eaten fresh, but most were carefully sorted and spread out in the sun to dry. The dried fruits provided vitamins for Native Americans during the long winter months when fresh fruit was not available.

Herbs were also picked and dried. Peppermint was mixed with pounded meat to keep the meat fresh.

Gathering wild plants was a seasonal task. Different plants, or parts of plants, were gathered at different times of the year. Gathering was a part of the seasonal journeys to and from the annual bison hunts.

In the spring and summer Pawnee women gathered hundreds of bushels of Indian potatoes. They collected wild onions, cucumbers and lamb's quarter in addition to wild plums and chokecherries. Young cattails shoots and buds were boiled and eaten.

During the fall they gathered Jerusalem artichokes. The Pawnee ate the roots of this plant fresh or saved them to use during the winter in soups. Sunflowers grew wild in Kansas. Their seeds were gathered and roasted. The seeds could be eaten after being roasted or ground into flour for later use in breads or soups.

Wild plants were less abundant in the winter. Cattail roots could be gathered all winter and baked or boiled like potatoes or ground into flour for making bread. These were eaten by the Pawnee when other foods were not available. Rose hips, the small fruits formed on rose bushes, were gathered regularly by many tribes. The seeds of the lotus, a flower that grows in water, would be parched, ground and put into bread or soup. The roots of this plant could be peeled, cut up, and cooked with meat or corn.

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