Drawing on the knowledge and wisdom of countless generations of Crow Indian women, the well-known speaker and teacher Alma Hogan Snell presents an indispensable guide to the traditional lore, culinary uses, and healing properties of native foods.

 

A Taste of Heritage imparts the lore of ages along with the traditional Crow philosophy of healing and detailed practical advice for finding and harvesting plants: from the key to creating irresistible dishes of cattails and dandelions, salsify and Juneberries, antelope meat and buffalo hooves, to the secret of using plants to enhance beauty and incite love. Snell describes the age-old practice of turning wildflowers and garden plants into balms and remedies for such ailments and injuries as snakebite, headache, leg cramps, swollen joints, asthma, and sores. She brings to bear not only her lifetime of experience but also the invaluable lessons of her grandmother, the legendary medicine woman Pretty Shield.

 

With life-enhancing recipes for everything from soups, teas, and breads to poultices, aphrodisiacs, and fertility aids, A Taste of Heritage is above all a fascinating cultural document certain to enrich the reader’s relationship with the natural world.

 

 

Wild Bitterroot Sauce

Wild Carrot Pudding

Cattail Biscuits

Dandelion Soup

Salsify Oyster Stew

Balapia (Berry Pudding)

Juneberry Pie

Chokecherry Cake

Wild Mint Tea

Bitterberry Lemonade

Wheel Bread

Boiled Hooves

Bill’s Mother’s Antelope Roast

Stuffed Trout

Elk Roast

Stuffed Eggs

Old-Time Moose Roast

Wild Turnip Porridge

Wild Turnip Bread

Fresh Wild Salad

Buffalo Cattail Stew

Ground Tomato Salad

Gooseberry Pudding

Bearberry Butter

Spicy Dried Plum Cake

Buffaloberry Jelly

Alma Hogan Snell is the granddaughter of the famed Crow medicine woman Pretty Shield, on whose life the classic Pretty-shield is based. She is the author of Grandmother’s Grandchild: My Crow Indian Life, available in a Bison Books edition. Lisa Castle is a graduate student in biology at the University of Kansas. Kelly Kindscher is an associate scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey and the author of Medicinal Wild Plants of the Prairie: An Ethnobotanical Guide.

"This charming work is a contribution to ethnobotany and foodways in the context of contemporary Crow culture, with its mixture of tradition and assimilation, from the perspective of one deeply situated tradition bearer."—Dana Kramer-Rolls, Western Folklore