Why Eating Insects Is an American Tradition

Both #NativeAmericans and colonists enjoyed fried cicadas, grasshopper flour, and insect fruitcakes.

by Mark Hay April 2, 2018

"In just over five years, the apostles of insect eating have moved #entomophagy in the Unites States and Europe from a Fear Factor sideshow to a regular fixture in food industry trend lists. These entopreneurs, dozens of newly minted bug farmers and cricket-laced protein bar hawkers, built their culinary foothold through compelling arguments about nutrition and sustainability. #Crickets, for example, provide leaner protein than animal meats, require minimal feed and water to rear, and produce far fewer greenhouse gas emissions per pound. These claims may be overblown, but they’re effective.

"Common wisdom holds, however, that the industry still faces one major headwind: culture. While the vast majority of the world has some history or current practice of insect eating, Europe and America, many insect eating enthusiasts and experts claim, do not. In the absence of precedent, we’re primed to see eating creepy crawlies as loathsome.

"There’s a little problem with this common wisdom, though. America does have a history of insect eating. Native communities across the modern United States developed culinary traditions around dozens of insect species, from crickets to caterpillars, #ants to aphids.

"White settlers and other newcomers ultimately denigrated these traditions. But well into the 19th century, they occasionally participated in them, or formed limited insect-eating cultures of their own. In some communities, insect eating remained relatively common well into the mid-20th century; a few continue today.

"The origins of these foodways are not as well documented as the development of, say, cakes or bagels. But we do know that by the time Europeans and other newcomers encountered American Indians, many had highly developed insect harvesting practices. In the 19th century, the Shoshone and other Native communities in the Great Basin region formed massive circles and beat the brush to drive thousands of grasshoppers into pits, blankets, or bodies of water for mass collection; they then roasted them on coals or ground them into flour. The Paiute and other groups out West dug trenches with precise, vertical walls around trees, then smoked out caterpillars for regularized, large-scale harvests. Some Paiute communities around Mono Lake in California reportedly organized their calendar around the life cycles of certain larvae, as well as other types of small game such as rabbits or lizards.

"Some of this insect eating just made practical sense. Grasshoppers were thick on the plains during average seasons, and in heavy swarm years, a plague of hoppers-turned-locusts could blot out the sky. Into the 20th century, lumberjacks in Oregon claimed that caterpillars were so plentiful that, during their month-long feeding season, the sound of their crap falling from the trees was like an unending sleet storm. Harvesting this bounty was a time- and energy-efficient way of gathering protein.

"But in many communities, insect eating was not merely a matter of survival or convenience. American Indians with plenty of other options for hunting or harvesting collected insects as a delicacy. A mid-20th century account of the Cherokee in North Carolina notes that they dug up young cicadas, removed their legs, and fried them in hog fat as a treat. Sometimes they baked them into pies or salted and pickled them for later. They also apparently loved roasted #cornworms and yellowjacket #grubs, which were hardly as convenient to harvest as a locust swarm."

Read more:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-eating-bugs-america

Faculty Focus - USM’s Dr. #DavidShaneLowry

April 25, 2024

"Meet Dr. David Shane Lowry, the new anthropology professor at the University of Southern Maine, who teaches classes at the Gorham and Portland campuses. Lowry is a member of the #Lumbee tribe of #NorthCarolina, and is the first Native (Indigenous) tenure-track professor at USM.

"Starting at MIT and finishing his doctorate at UNC Chapel Hill, Lowry went on to be the Distinguished Fellow in Native American Studies at MIT, and Visiting Senior Fellow in the School of Social Policy at Brandeis University, before accepting a tenure-track position at the University of Southern Maine.

"During his undergraduate at MIT, he envisioned himself becoming an engineer, be it civil, mechanical, or chemical, but he couldn’t shake an idea that he 'should begin to tell stories.' Like so many students, Lowry took one class that changed everything. In his case it was an anthropology course. He kept up with his science courses as well, studying and eventually working in healthcare before embarking on a doctorate.

"Lowry recalls working in pharmacy in North Carolina in 2003 during the Iraq war, and seeing the maimed soldiers returning, 'they were living side by side with Lumbee people who were also maimed from other conditions, different types of violence, different types of disease states etcetera.'

"In the United States, Native American communities tend to be made into industrial dumping grounds and sites of environmental degradation. The effects of this on the health of Lumbee people that Lowry witnessed led to his doctoral research, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, studying health, healing, and dying in the Lumbee community. Lowry completed this doctorate degree in five years – a notable accomplishment by any measure, and indicative of his sense of purpose.

"Lowry describes coming to Maine as an opportunity. Maine has a deep history as well as numerous contemporary issues that it is working through in regards to Native American communities who live here. Lowry is working to build bridges, raise awareness, create discussions, and be the best educator and resource that he can be for his students.

"Lowry leads the #IndigenousRelationshipLab (IRL) at USM, which focuses on issues of #justice and #remattering. That second word, ‘remattering,’ warrants a little explanation. Native people once mattered in this country, in that the United State’s founding fathers feared them and saw a need to clear them away so that their land could be taken and put to different uses by non-Native peoples. In the years since, Native American issues have too often fallen by the wayside; this has been so much the case that a 2018 study found that 40% of Americans didn’t know that Native people still existed or that they were oppressed. Remattering is in one sense the work of making this topic, and these people, matter again. Today, an estimated 2.5% of Maine’s population are Native people whose existence here goes back more than 12,000 – perhaps 125,000 years.

"One current issue in Maine focuses on LD 2004, a bill which was vetoed in 2023, but would have restored access to federal protections for the Indigenous tribal nations that make up the #WabanakiConfederacy, and worked to reinstate their #sovereignty. Tribes in Maine are currently treated as municipalities under the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980, which makes Maine’s relationships with the tribes an outlier in the United States.

"Essentially, of the small portions of land the United States government reserved or held in trust for #NativeAmericans, what we call reservations, the Indigenous peoples of Maine, #Wabanaki Peoples, have severely limited control over the land that is set aside for their nations."

Source:
https://www.gorhamtimes.com/usms-david-shane-lowry/
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