Incident from days past, that popped up in my memories today.
I'm reminded of a primitive "hunt or die" trip we did on the Marias River. We took a bag of potatoes and onions for around 16 of us. And not that many of those. We ended up with goose, rattle snakes, and a deer to get us by.
We had a 32' freighter canoe we had built, and a couple small production canoes. It was hunt or fish if you were going to eat. We made note that the first day or so guys were saying how much they were missing their women. By the third day, they were talking about how much they missed egg sandwiches. Priorities and desires.
I recall we had Steve West with us, who is a Mandan Indian. We were sitting around a smoky cottonwood fire one evening, wet and cold from rain. He looked around at us and said something along the lines of, "You damned white men. You got my people accustomed to Howard Johnsons, warm houses, and McDonald's. Then you bring me out here, and try to kill me like this."
More follow up in response to a question about our food;
Not far from the truth. We had put the goose and a rattle snake in a dutch oven in the evening to cook. John Taylor and I were the last ones up, and we were burying the dutch oven over coals with sand.
We heard the lid scrape to the side. We stopped, looked at each other for a moment. Then we put the lid back in place, finished burying it, and went to bed.
The way we did things on the river, we never ate breakfast first thing in the morning. We had found it we do that, people took too long to load up to travel. So, it was jump up, get the camp packed, and head down the river. We substituted whiskey and rum for breakfast.
I recall that morning Jeff Noble and I were in a small canoe, and your dad was in the front of the freighter. John T. in the rear called for the big one to shift over to a channel. Timmy reached out with his paddle to push the small canoe away, and instead, tipped us down so the freighter ran right over the top of our canoe. Getting wet was bad enough, but we also lost a jug of rum we had just mixed with good ol' Marias alkali water. We mourned for quite awhile.
Anyway, back to the dutch oven. We put in at the buffalo jump on the Goosebill for breakfast. While John and I got a fire going, the rest crossed the river to collect buffalo bones and teeth. While the dutch oven was heating, John and I checked out the tipi rings.
When we went back to the fire, John opened the dutch oven. We were somewhat surprised to see rice in the pot, as we hadn't brought any rice with us. It turned out, the snake had maggots crawling all over the inside. John picked it up, shook it like a whip, and rinsed it in the river. Back in the pot it went, and we stirred the "rice" into the mix. We called the guys back for breakfast, and everyone knew better than to say anything about the cooking. Some would pick up a bit of rice, and look it over. Some would toss it, others just went ahead and ate it. Meat's meat.
As everyone ate, it was like they were panning for gold, as they swished the food around, attempting to wash the sand to the bottom of their plates, as it was a darned gritty stew. I did kill a deer that evening, but dragged it back to the camp after I gutted it. Tasted just like sage brush. No complaints!
Yeah I might make a plain one in the future but I've got other plans for this one.
