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Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1028906
OCTOBER 2018 • NEBRASKAland 51 W hen I give my mini-lecture about the Pawnee return to Nebraska, I also share a bit of their history here on this very spot on the Middle Loup River near Dannebrog. I point out that "Loup" is French for "wolf," and probably refers to the "Wolf Pawnee." Or maybe the Loup Wolf Skidi Pawnee, a delightful re-re-redundance, since all four words mean wolf. So we are saying "the wolf wolf wolf wolf people." That's a lot of wolfing. To this day the Pawnee hand signal for themselves is two raised fingers like the peace sign, moved forward slowly on the level … two wolf ears coming through the grass. But, I explain, the Pawnee however didn't call the beautiful, peaceful river here the "Loup" River. And still don't. They (and the Omaha, for that matter) call it "Plenty Potatoes" because of the abundance of food that was available along its banks, "potatoes" being a kind of general word for "lots of good eats." I explain to visitors that for the Pawnee, who were camped right here where I sit at this moment when the first Danes crossed the river April of 1871, setting up camp here was for all the world like camping in an aisle of a very large supermarket. The "hunting" part of the hunting and gathering description of Native societies applies, actually, only to the hunting of wild game because they probably didn't have to do nearly as much searching for what they wanted as I have to do when I go into the Acme Giganto Food Emporium looking for something slightly out of the ordinary like caper berries in wine sauce. (Well, slightly out of the ordinary for you maybe.) The early occupants of this land knew what was edible, what was in season when, what it looked like at various stages of its growth, how it was best prepared, and where it could be found. And for that matter, they also knew where to find game most easily, and how to take it. And how to prepare it for later use. While homesteaders starved or ate maggoty or impossibly salty pork, the Indians over the hill were enjoying dried buffalo and berries and taking of the abundance that was available at any particular time of the year. In fact (I was told by Sicangu ethnobotanist Richard FoolBull many years ago) it may only have been a matter of remembering where the campers had planted it in the first place. Or perhaps where their people had planted it many generations earlier because they were smart and in many cases they made a point of planting and maintaining "wild" foods precisely for the purpose of later harvests. Like the white oaks that distinguished the Dannebrog "island" when the Danes first arrived and whose progeny still grace the village park. Pre-invasion Natives no more had to go out hunting for foodstuffs here on the Plenty Potatoes than a modern Nebraska farmer has to go out prowling country roads in a combine looking for corn to pick. He knows where it is. He planted it! I have on occasion during my own "hunting and gathering" expeditions stumbled on places where there had once been a pioneer farmstead, probably German, maybe a pair of juniper tree "lightning rods" the only sign of where a house once stood. And I would find now weedy plots of asparagus, rhubarb (Peistengel), or hops, now perfectly at home on the Great Plains, but once as much "immigrants" as those who transplanted and nurtured them as a civilizing factor in the Nebraska wilderness. Sorting out what came here when, what's wild, what's invasive, what's an escaped domestic, what belongs and what doesn't gets down to drawing some pretty fine lines. Not that it matters. Newcomers don't take long to become old-timers when it comes to botany. My ethnobotanist friend Randy Ledford snarls at invasive species, and while I understand the beauty and importance of maintaining old, maybe ancient, biota, I remind Randy that, well, white guys like him and me are also an "invasive species." I think too of people who resent "immigrants" when their own name, lineage and appearance reveals a history of migration and a time when they too were cultural "weeds," planted out of place in a strange environment. See that the Mexican Mayan lady standing in front of us in the grocery line with the tomatillos (a variety of nightshade), nopal (prickly pear pads), and huitlacoche (corn smut) in her cart? You know, she may be far more appropriate to this landscape than this grandson of a German-Russian immigrant standing there with his honey crisp apples, Velveeta American cheese, and the hot dog fixin's. Not to mention the groceries. ■ Roger Welsch is an author, humorist, folklorist and a former essayist for CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the author of more than 40 books and has been contributing to NEBRASKAland Magazine since 1977. By Roger Welsch Hunting and Gathering Ain't What's for Supper? NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO