Food talk offers surprises

The Daily Mining Gazette - Published: Monday, July 16, 2007

CAPTION: Jane Nordberg/Daily Mining Gazette

Prof. Larry Lankton speaks to an audience Saturday about Keweenaw foodways in the mid-1800s. Held at the Keweenaw Heritage Center in Calumet, the talk was in conjunction with the Key Ingredients and Michigan Foodways exhibits

By JANE NORDBERG, DMG Writer

CALUMET — Early settlers to the area didn’t live off deer or rabbits, and they didn’t live like Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett, according to author Larry Lankton. But they did have to worry a lot more about food than we do today.

“We might worry about what we’re having for dinner,” he said. “They had to worry if they were having dinner.”

Lankton, who did extensive research on the Copper Country for his books “Cradle to Grave” and “Beyond the Boundaries,” gave a talk on early Keweenaw Foodways Saturday at the Keweenaw Heritage Center at St. Anne’s in Calumet.

The talk was the kick-off to the Speakers’ Bureau series held in conjunction with the Key Ingredients and Michigan Foodways exhibits on display at the KHC through Aug. 26.

More than 60 people attended the talk Saturday, which focused on food consumption in the Keweenaw from the 1840s through the 1870s.

Back then, Lankton said, food was part of the everyday struggle of life. Agriculturally, the Keweenaw was not a bountiful place.

“We have long hours of daylight in the summer, but not very high temperatures,” he said, explaining why corn and wheat were not ideal crops.

Berries, on the other hand, were found in abundance and early pioneers enjoyed blueberries, thimbleberries and strawberries as part of their regular diet.

Lest people think the early settlers hunted deer and lived off the meat all winter, Lankton cast doubt on that thought.

In 1870, he said, The Portage Lake Mining Gazette reported with great fanfare the fact that a dead deer was brought on ice from Escanaba and cooked up for a special dinner at a Hancock restaurant.

“If you could just go out in the back 40 and shoot any deer you wanted, I very much doubt they would have made such a big deal out of some dead one they hauled in from hours away,” Lankton reasoned.

The same was true of rabbits, he said, which are never mentioned as part of any regular or holiday meal.

What people did eat, he said, was fish and small birds.

“People came from all over extolling the virtues of the fish here,” he said.

Lucena Brockway, husband of hotelier Daniel Brockway, kept a detailed diary of the people the couple entertained in the 1840s.

“She talks a lot about turkey,” Lankton said. “They had turkey this way, turkey that way and I can tell you she was getting pretty darn tired of turkey.”

Most people kept a garden and raised a few chickens, and supplemented that with a little hunting and fishing. Meat was preserved by salting.

But overall, he said, people got their dinner the same way we do today — by buying it.

“Mining begat merchandising, and as soon as people were up here mining there were people setting up stores here,” Lankton said. “People have to eat, and there were people up here selling them their dinner.”

That included a vast array of canned foods, including preserved meats, and oysters from the East Coast.

“From sheet music to pianos to crackers,” he said. “If you could buy it in Detroit or Cleveland in 1850, you could get it here.”

The difference was it took a little longer, as the main transportation route was via the waterways.

Once shipping closed for the winter, that was the last fresh anything people would see until the spring.

“If you ordered it in October, you might have to wait until June to get it,” he said.

Early pioneers didn’t worry about calories, cholesterol or carbohydrates, he said. It was a simpler time.

“They just wanted enough food, enough different food, and food that tasted good that wasn’t spoiled,” he said. “If they had all that, they were pretty darn happy.”

Jane Nordberg can be reached at jnordberg@mininggazette.com