The Seminole tribe was the dominant Native American force in Florida during colonization of the area by European settlers during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Each year, Fort Foster at Hillsborough River State Park hosts a living history exhibit where schoolchildren can come and learn about the Second Seminole War, also called the Florida War, which occurred from 1835 -1842 between the United States and the the Seminoles.
My child’s class took a field trip to Fort Foster this week to experience the living museum firsthand and I was happy to tag along as one of the chaperones for the class.
Every facet of life during this period for both the American soldier and Seminole Indians was covered in detail as one walked around the Fort as well as the tribal settlement located across the pristine waters of the Hillsborough River via a wooden bridge. While all aspects of the living museum proved interesting, I was particularly fascinated by the traditional foods of Native Americans living in Florida at that time as demonstrated by a lady dressed in Seminole attire who thoroughly explained how the tribe nourished themselves on a daily basis.
In the picture above, you can see an animal roasting over a fire.
The kids and chaperones had a fun time trying to guess what the animal was, but we all were wrong even though the claws are a dead giveaway that the animal is a raccoon!
Raccoons supposedly taste like, you guessed it, chicken!
Not boneless, skinless chicken breasts, mind you, but the dark meat of a chicken which is mineral rich and full of very nourishing fat.
Soaked Corn The Mainstay of the Seminole Tribe
The corn was pounded into a coarse, cracked flour, soaked in weak lye water obtained from wood ash and then cooked over low to medium heat for 3-4 hours into a soup called sofkey.
The lye increased the nutrient availability of the corn, most notably niacin. Since sofkey was the mainstay of the Seminole diet, release of the niacin from the corn via soaking was absolutely critical to health.
Pellagra, a vitamin B3 (niacin) deficiency disease is a devastating illness which can result in death following progressively worsening symptoms of diarrhea, dermatitis and dementia. Soaking the corn prior to cooking and eating alleviated risk of this illness.
Sofkey is sour to the taste indicating that the corn was fermented as well as soaked further improving digestibility and nutrient absorption for the Seminoles.
The Seminole Tribe in Florida was never completely defeated by the United States with several hundred individuals hiding out in the Everglades indefinitely eluding attempts to round them up and ship them off to an Oklahoma reservation.
No doubt, the Seminole tribe’s wise and careful preparation of their grain based foods proved a deciding and critical factor in their ability to evade and resist resettlement by the United States government for over a hundred years all the while remaining healthy and strong.
If you live in the West Central Florida area, you can still visit the living history museum at Fort Foster which is on display through the weekend.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sarah Pope has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. Her work is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.
Her work has been covered by major media including USA Today, ABC, NBC, and many others.
Bahaman Style Conch Chowder Recipe
what kinds of foodd did they eat? :}
Does anyone have any information on what species of grains were consumed by Native Americans here in Florida? I see and expect to see maize, but “grain” can mean a lot of things.
Did the Native Americans eat other grains?
If I went for a hike in Florida, what edible grains might I find?
I’ve read a lot of good comments on this post.
Here’s my two cents, echoing a lot of other folks:
I eat a loose version of Paleo/Primal, corresponding most closely to Paul Jaminet’s Perfect Health Diet. I have Sarah Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions and Weston Price’s book, and consider that school as fellow travellers.
My take-away from the post, and other reading on the subject, is that traditional methods of preparing grains are fairly onerous. So the Paleo/Primal shortcut of just skipping grains entirely is completely valid, and quite a reasonable approach.
I enjoy this blog, but I think sometimes it plays up the differences between Primal/Paleo and Weston Price inspired diets, like grains, too much. They are much more similar than different.
I find the Paleo/Primal view that preparing grains is onerous silly. It is easy to prepare grains and grains are an important part of the diet and cannot be replaced with other foods.
Any women who eats traditionally and has breasfed KNOWS that soaked cereal grains cause the milk supply to go through the roof. A sweet potato, baked potato or other type of carb DOES NOT do the same thing.
Excluding an entire food group is not wise unless a particular health condition is warranted. In my view, the majority of paleo/primal eaters will resume eating grains at some point realizing that excluding them completely from the diet was not a smart move unless for a short period of time to heal the gut or solve an autoimmune problem (such as GAPS diet).
I don’t see how this follows from the article. The Seminoles take the grain, pound it, mash it, soak it and cook it over a slow fire… and that’s NOT tedious?
I’m a modern American. When I cook lentils I soak them twice, over at least a day and a half, when I could just cook up some fresh meat and veggies… and that’s NOT inconvenient?
Doable, sure. Not even difficult. But certainly not convenient.
You do break with the Primal/Paleo people over whether grains are necessary or not. It seems dubious from any evolutionary point of view… if wheat domestication is 9,000 years old, as Wikipedia suggests, then how did we survive without this “essential” food? Or consider Asian diets, entirely lacking in wheat and corn until a hundred years ago.
If your point is that prepared properly you CAN consume these foods, sure, I’ll buy that. Necessary, no way.
You don’t have to do that anymore with modern technology 🙂 You probably marinate chicken or steak, right? Soaking grains is comparable to this simple task.
For healthy people, properly prepared grains are a necessary part of the diet. Grains are necessary to achieve optimal health and development in children as discovered by Dr. Price who found that the cereal grain eating tribes who combined this food with animal foods were stronger and better developed physically than the primarily carnivorous and the vegetarian tribes.
I found this information by accident not long ago and decided it was worth putting “out there” for others to see. Quite a lot of history here:
and here:
Part Amistad, part Braveheart, part Spartacus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E0j8xgxjTY (This is a very good overview from a Professor)
I had no idea they traveled from FL to OK and then down into Mexico to settle, because slavery was illegal in Mexico.
I’m interested in lots of historical things and this article on Seminole’s really piqued my interest – especially when within the first few comments here someone took you to task for the fact that Seminole’s were something different than what was presented in your article!
PS- I want to add that I’ve been reading over past posts (specficially the ones about veg*n diets) and reading over the comments. I really do commend you for not sugar coating anything, for standing your ground, and for defending your opinions even if people don’t agree. I can’t believe some of the names people have called you, and called you snotty, or an agenda-pusher, or that you think you’re better. This is ridiculous. It seems like when you provide facts to a lot of these people they get pissed and lash out. I guess I just want to say good job and keep it up!