New Mexico's First Peoples:
Apaches
| Navajo | Pueblos
Apaches
About the
Apaches and their Food Traditions
The Apache Nation of tribes are further divided
into divisions called bands and clans. There are
five Apache reservations. Famous Apache chiefs and
medicine men include Geronimo, Cochise, Victorio,
Santos, Juh, Nahche, Nakaidoklini, and Mangas Coloradas.
The word Apache probably comes from "ápachu,"
the Zuñi name for the Navajo, which means
"enemy," or possibly Awa'tehe, the Ute
name for Apaches, which means "People of the
Mountains." They were called "Apaches
de Nabaju" by the early Spaniards in New Mexico.
The Apache are the most southerly group of the Athapascan
language family. They are thought to have lived
in the Southwest US for 1,000 to 1,500 years.
There are many Apache tribes and bands. Some Apache
tribes are commonly called by synonomous names which
refer to the same group of people. The name has
also been applied to some unrelated Yuman tribes,
such as the Apache Mohave (Yavapai) and Apache Yuma.
The Apache call themselves N'de, Dinë, Tinde,
or Inde, which all mean "the people."
They were first mentioned as Apaches by Oñate
in 1598, although Coronado, in 1541, met the Querechos
(the Vaqueros of Benavides, and probably the Jicarillas
and Mescaleros of modern times) on the plains of
east New Mexico and west Texas. There is no evidence
that the Apache reached Arizona until after the
middle of the 16th century.
Most Apaches were nomadic and lived almost completely
off the buffalo. Some Apache tribes had a long history
in what is now Texas. Western Apaches living near
the Pueblo Indians became farmers. They once planted
and grew maize, beans, pumpkins, and watermelons,
but the Comanches would attack them in their fields
and they were eventually forced to move westward
further into New Mexico and Arizona.They used dogs
as beasts of burden, and were the first Indians,
after the Pueblos, to aquire and use horses.
The Yavapai and Apache were the last Indians to
be subdued in the Southwest. Geronimo battled both
Mexican and United States troops and became notorious
for his daring exploits, raids, and numerous escapes
from the military. In the end, 38 men, women and
children evaded 5,000 U.S. Army troops and the Mexican
authorities for twelve months. Geronimo's warriors
became the last major force of independent Indians
who refused to acknowledge the United States Government.
This ended September 4, 1886, when Geronimo surrendered
to the United States Army.
After the Chiricahuas surrendered in 1886, roughly
512 Chiricahuas, almost the entire population of
all their bands, were shuffled from prison sites
in Florida to Alabama to Oklahoma as prisoners of
war for twenty-seven years. In 1912 they were finally
allowed to settle on the Mescalero Apache Reservation
in New Mexico but did not arrive until the following
year.
In 1900 the members of the Apache tribe in the
United States were classified as Coyotera, Jicarilla,
Mescalero, San Carlos, Tonto, and White Mountain
Apaches, and were located in Arizona, New Mexico,
and Oklahoma. Today they have the Ft. Sill Reservation
in Oklahoma, Jicarilla Apache Reservation and Mescalero
Reservation in New Mexico, and the San Carlos and
White Mountain Reservations in Arizona.
Read
this description of an Apache woman's life
Navajo
"Traditional Navajo
Foods and Lifestyle Bring Health and Strength"
Reprinted by permission from Indian Country
Today By Brenda Norrell
SHIPROCK, NM -- Seated on the edge of his pickup
load of steamed and roasted corn, Dennison Benally
enjoys the sweet life of a Navajo summer day. Surrounded
by his family, he talks easily of roasting corn
in its husks, fresh from the cornfields, in the
family?s outdoor kiln-style oven made of rocks.
It is this corn, naadaa, a gift of the Holy People,
which nourished Navajos through the ages.
When Navajo came from the Four Worlds, they were
without food so the turkey shook himself and kernels
of corn fell from under his wings.
Navajo elder Kenneth Foster said the Navajo Creation
story tells how Changing Woman, the first Navajo
woman, was transformed into a sacred being. Corn
meal was used for the blessing. When Mother Earth
gave birth to Monster Slayer and Son of Waters,
the twins journeyed to their father the sun. They
were told that they had come from the "land
of growing corn and rain."
Before his death, Navajo elder Howard McKinley,
who lived to be nearly 100 years old, recalled how
corn pollen was used in ceremonies and corn silk
was used for healing teas. Navajo women sang corn
grinding songs as they ground corn on grinding stones.
Parched corn was ground together with pinons for
nut butter similar to peanut butter.
McKinley remembered picking wild yucca bananas
and wild potatoes. He remembered how blocks of frozen
water from Blue Canyon were stored as chunks of
ice for summer months in cut-rock houses near his
home in Tse Ho Tso (Meadow between the rocks) known
as Fort Defiance, Arizona.
"People wouldn?t be getting cancer today if
they were still eating the wild foods," McKinley
said. He served as a tribal councilman most of his
life and traveled with Annie Wauneka, who became
a legend, encouraging Navajos to adopt safer health
practices in the fight against tuberculosis.
When McKinley saw Navajo elderly being served corn
dogs on a napkin, he helped revolutionize Navajo
food programs in the mid-20th century.
It was called "the corn dog harvest" in
Washington.
McKinley, a storyteller, received a master?s degree
and always walked long distances. If he needed to
go to Albuquerque, about 175 miles away, he would
just start out walking, sleeping in trees to avoid
coyotes. While sharing stories on the front porch
of his home, he credited his long life to walking
and laughter.
Just down the road from McKinley?s home in Fort
Defiance, Louva Dahozy and her daughter Katherine
Arviso launched innovative projects for decades;
proving traditional Navajo foods are healthier than
modern diets packed with fat, sugar and salt.
Arviso, while director of the tribe?s Navajo Food
and Nutrition department, led a scientific study
of traditional foods, which revealed the secrets
of ancient Navajo foods. Among those, the ash made
from burning juniper needles, cooked in blue corn
meal mush, is an amazing source of calcium and minerals.
Blue corn meal mush with juniper ash (Taa niil)
has 802 mg of calcium in one cup, compared to 2.4
mg of the same amount without ash (Toshchiin.) Minerals
were also found in Navajo edible white clay, grey
clay, tumbleweed ash and Zuni Lake salt.
The study showed that ash was superior to baking
soda in boiled hominy corn. The ash added calcium
and Vitamin A, while the baking soda added sodium
which can increase hypertension.
Dried foods, stored for winter, were analyzed including
dried yellow squash and zucchini squash and watermelon,
good sources of vitamins and minerals. The study
revealed high sources of protein and iron in mutton
blood sausage, liver and heart.
Traditional Navajo "creamer" made from
ground corn offered protein, fiber, calcium, magnesium
and iron. Wild greens were very high in Vitamin
A. One half cup of Navajo spinach "waa"
(Cleome serulatum) contained four times the recommended
daily allowance for Vitamin A.
Chiilchin, sumac berries, were found high in Vitamin
C. Roasted pinons offer protein, potassium, magnesium,
iron and zinc.
The yucca bananas from the Yucca Bacata, wide bladed
yucca, are nutritious, sweet and delicious. The
ripe fruit was eaten fresh or prepared for winter.
The pulp from the wild banana fruits was either
scraped and baked on a hot rock or the fruits were
baked in a bowl in hot coals. The baked fruit was
sometimes made into a roll, with a hole pushed through
the center to allow air to circulate. A piece of
the dried roll could be cut and added to corn meal
mush.
Yucca was used in many ways. The center blades
were used to make "gazoo" cheese by mixing
the blades with goat?s milk. The blades were used
for making brushes or as a combination needle and
thread. The roots were prized as natural soap and
shampoo.
Food clay or dleesh to Navajos, was mixed with
wild potato or tomatillo berry to counteract the
tart and astringent taste. Mixed with the box thorn,
it became a remedy for upset stomachs.
Before the days of mutton, brought by the Spaniards,
and fry bread, ingredients brought by the Calvary
and traders, Navajo traditional foods were wild
plants and game. During times of hunger, wild grass
seeds were gathered and ponies were eaten.
Dahozy points out Navajos grew strong and healthy
on the wild foods and game. Long before the days
of fast foods, canned foods, and frozen foods Navajos
gathered and hunted their foods.
Navajo gathered wild grass seeds for grain and
ground their corn. White flour, later used for fry
bread, arrived with the Calvary on the Long Walk
of suffering and exile to Fort Sumner, N.M. After
the turn of the century, trading posts sold the
first canned and processed foods and soft drinks.
"Navajo traditional foods are not the white
flour and greasy foods that traders brought to the
reservation," Dahozy said.
Source
for this article
Navajo Fry Bread
"Out of the Frying Pan" by Tantri Wija
in The New Mexican, August 16, 2006
It may be a cliché to say that wherever one
finds North American Indians, one finds frybread,
but it isn’t necessarily untrue.
Whether or not one believes the simple fried dough
has a genuine place in a tribe’s traditions,
almost every Native American gathering features
the soft, often sugar-dusted dough.
The role of frybread in American Indian culture
dates to the second half of the 19th century, when
tribes forced to move to reservations were given
“commodities” — or government
rations — consisting largely of flour and
lard. With these unfamiliar, limited and nutrition-poor
ingredients, they created frybread and adopted it
as a dietary staple.
According to Joyce Begay-Foss, the director of
education at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture,
“(Frybread) was a survival food that came
out of being rounded up and put in captivity and
given commodities that (American Indians) weren’t
used to having. (The government) even gave them
coffee beans, and they weren’t used to coffee.
It made them sick.
“They struggled to figure out what to do
with flour and lard and things that they weren’t
used to eating,” Begay-Foss, a Navajo, said.
“And that totally changed their diet.”
Most cultures have some version of a simple fried
dough; frybread is not all that different from a
doughnut, a beignet, a sopaipilla, a buñuelo,
a johnnycake or a poori, for example.
Indian frybread also is similar to the fried dough
that American settlers ate while crossing the prairie
on their way west. In John Steinbeck’s novel
The Grapes of Wrath, the impoverished, itinerant
Okies eat fried dough for every meal.
Frybread also has become popular in the larger
American culture. The Cheesecake Factory —
a national casual-dining chain — has frybread
on its menus, and one can sometimes find it, dressed
up in truffles or gourmet chocolate, among the selections
of some of the pricier restaurants around town.
Ironically, even the government has officially recognized
frybread: It was named the state bread of South
Dakota in 2005.
Though eating fried dough is not unique to American
Indians, many permutations of the dish are distinctively
Native. In New Mexico, for example, one can order
a Navajo burger — a burger folded in frybread
— and Navajo or Indian tacos — frybread
topped with beans, cheese, lettuce, meat and other
savory fillings. The replacement of the tortilla
with the round frybread is distinctive to Southwestern
tribes.
Health controversy
What is also uniquely Native is frybread’s
role in the history — past and present —
of the people who consume it. Indian frybread has
lately come under fire for its unhealthiness as
well as its cultural implications.
In her January 2005 article in Indian Country Today,
American Indian activist Susan Harjo asked her fellow
Indians to abstain from frybread because it contributes
to the high obesity rates on reservations and, as
she put it, gives the impression of Natives as “simple-minded
people who salute the little grease bread and get
misty-eyed about it.”
Harjo is referring to frybread’s origins
as a product of government rations, implying that
by continuing to consume frybread every day, Americans
Indians are perpetuating the indignities thrust
upon them in the past.
“If frybread were a movie, it would be hard-core
porn,” Harjo writes. “No redeeming qualities.
Zero nutrition.”
Not everyone would agree with Harjo.
Lois Ellen Frank, author of the award-winning cookbook
Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, is part Kiowa
and a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology
at The University of New Mexico. Frank has been
doing extensive research on foods, especially the
connection between food and culture in American
Indian society.
“Frybread has really an interesting history,”
Frank said, “and from a Native American perspective,
it’s split.
“On one side they love frybread, they cook
it every day, and they consider it a traditional
food. (So) I would say yes, it is traditional from
the perspective that it’s been around for
150 years.”
But there’s now a second wave of reaction
to frybread that Frank calls the “resistance.”
“Because diabetes is rampant — as high
as 90 percent on some reservations, primarily Type
II — the diet has deviated so far from its
origins that people are very concerned,” Frank
said.
She also points out that frybread has become symbolic
of some Native health problems even if it’s
not necessarily the primary cause of those conditions.
“My prediction,” Frank said, “is
we’re going to see frybread become iconic.
There used to be T-shirts that said ‘Frybread
power.’ Now there are T-shirts with a red
circle with a line through it (meaning) ‘No
frybread.’ We want to be healthy.”
The reintroduction of traditional foods such as
cacti, beans, corn and pinocha, as well as an increase
in activity associated with farming those foods,
could be key to turning the American Indian diabetes
epidemic around, Frank said.
“When you reintroduce traditional food,”
she said, “it brings back all the culture
associated with the indigenous food, which is as
vitally important as the food itself. Not only is
the food important from a health standard, but all
the group activities have been given new life, things
that have almost disappeared — a renewal of
old traditions that have cultural importance.”
Pueblos
About Pueblo
Feast Days
Meet the Pueblo People -- Respectfully
by Dea Adria Mallin Cultural
Travels.com
The drums have been beating hypnotically for hours
– about as long as the 110° sun has been
beating down on dancer and observer alike in the
pueblo plaza. Filaments of dancing Pueblo Indian
men, women, and children thread slowly up and down
the plaza in the ritual patterns of the Corn Dance
in this centuries-old tradition.
Now the koshari – the sacred “clown”
men who deliver serious messages to their people,
their gargantuan bodies painted in black and white
stripes and arrayed with straw and bells –
emerge from the kiva holding the requisite chunks
of watermelon.
A few tourists point at the bulging painted bellies
above the loincloth and to the koshari faces scarfing
up the watermelon and spitting seeds in trickster
mode, while other tourists begin to clap or to laugh
loudly. “Hey, Joe, get that with the camera!”
shouts one, as several others raucously clamber
up the ladder of a private home to get a better
view for themselves.
What’s wrong with this picture of a Pueblo
Feast Day, open to the public? Sadly, too much.
Although the idea of entertainment is ingrained
in the American psyche, it is important not to mix
up a Native American feast day, or even the pueblo
itself on an ordinary day, with Disneyworld.
Says Calvin Tafoya, former director of the New
Mexico Indian Tourism Program, “Tourism can
have dramatic effects on a culture, and it is easy
to cross the exploitation line.”
With the popularity of travel to New Mexico and
the Southwest, many visitors are arriving at Indian
pueblos without an understanding of appropriate
etiquette. The people of the pueblos invite visitors
onto their sacred land and ask simple respect for
the ancient ways. Each pueblo has its own regulations,
each posts signs stating them, and each maintains
a pueblo office where, except at ceremonial days,
guests should register before walking around the
homes, church, or kiva. All too often, this is ignored
by the deliberate and the accidental tourist.
While everyday life at the pueblo can be quiet
to the point of a hush, celebration days draw large
crowds. Yet a Feast Day has entirely different rules
than the much noisier Pow Wow like the one in Gallup,
NM. Yes, I met the tribal people in Gallup, but
I met them differently. The Pow Wow is a social
gathering, intent on enjoyment. But the Buffalo
Dance at San Ildefonso, or the Elk Dance at Nambe,
or the Corn Dance at Santo Domingo or Santa Clara?
These are days of pure spiritual resonance.
To the uninformed, there may seem to be only sound
and random movement, when actually there is the
concentrated peace of the tribe members’ prayerful
dance steps, their hearts and minds at one with
Mother Earth, Father Sky, the drumbeat, and their
ancestors.
I have attended the Corn Dance at Santo Domingo
for fourteen of the past seventeen years, so I have
observed the 4-year-olds -- in deep concentration
as they moved their little feet in attentive alignment
with the drums, the chanting, and the steps of those
in front of them -- turn into young adults. And
each year there are new 4-year-olds growing into
the ancient ways.
I was lucky to have had a Pueblo Indian tell me,
on the day before my first Feast Day, that I should
bring lots of water, a hat and an umbrella to provide
shade, maybe a folding chair to sit on, money to
buy watermelon juice and Indian foods, and that
I should stay the entire time. Most tourists take
a look at the dancers and the drummers, catch a
bit of the ritual, walk to the area with crafts
and food, get too hot, and leave. Staying all day
and remaining quiet and observant allows me to experience
the sanctity, the suspension of time, and the hypnotic
repetitions that bind the community in their hopes
for a good harvest.
Feast Day visitors often ask, “When does
it start?” or “When does it end?”
As my brother used to say, irreverently, when it
was his turn to do the dishes, “I’ll
do them when the spirit moves me.” There are
approximate starting and ending times, but again,
visitors should not think of this day as “performance.”
Because the day is more akin to a church service
than a spectator event, even talking is inappropriate.
Laughing, pointing, clapping, taping, asking questions,
sketching, and photographing (except in rare instances)
are also inappropriate. Only when the concentration
of participants and spectators is unbroken can the
ceremony be experienced fully – and not as
trophy cocktail party talk.
For the Native American family, preparations for
a Feast Day are extensive and expensive; for a poor
family, the cost is considerable. Mounds of chile
stews, hot pou (oven bread), fry bread, posole,
and tamales are part of the orderly chaos as family
members and friends crowd the plaza and the adobe
dwellings.
Unless invited, and preferably in advance, tourists
should not invade a family space, particularly since
there are booths with plenty of foods and native
crafts outside the ceremony and dwelling area. Unfortunately,
tourists do not always make the necessary distinctions.
Some of the houses on the plaza were once ceremonial
buildings and are considered to be spiritual pathways
for Indian beliefs. Too often, visitors can be seen
climbing the ladders to the flat adobe roofs to
get a better view or walking into the homes of those
families who live on the plaza where the dancing
occurs. Here, they have been known to smoke cigarettes,
eat the food on the tables, and walk out. Because
the Indians are taught to be hospitable, polite,
and generous, and because the communal spirit is
at the center of the celebration, the Indian families
say nothing. But responsibility falls on the guest
who should observe the rules for privacy that he
would insist upon in his own house.
Remember, too, that if the adobe houses on the
plaza have sitting ledges, during a ceremony they
are for the elderly and not the tourists. At one
reservation, cushions had been set out on all the
ledges, and while most of the visitors politely
refrained from using them, some scooted over to
the cushions, shouting, “Hey! Come over here!
I’ve got seats!” That left the grandmothers
and the grandfathers (among the Pueblos, the elderly
are addressed as “Grandmother” and “Grandfather”
and accorded the full respect of longevity and acquired
wisdom) standing up.
If you visit on an ordinary day at one of New Mexico’s
nineteen pueblos, be aware that each tribe is trying
to strike a balance as it brings tourists to its
doorsteps. Visitors often misinterpret what they
see before them, thinking, for example, that an
unpaved road means squalor. To the Indian, nature
is the great teacher, and he needs to touch the
earth, literally. So the road is not paved, and
the Indian may go barefoot or wear moccasins or
sneakers.
Also, to the untutored, an adobe house may not
look like McMansion, but it has worked for centuries,
long before America as we know was even a glimmer.
On a visit to Cochiti, I got out of my air-condition
car to walk to a friend’s adobe house and
nearly melted before I reached the door. Yet upon
entering the house, I was as cool as I’d been
in my rental car with the AC on high. Adobe is not
poor; it’s high-tech!
There has always been much to learn from America’s
Indian tribes, who, from the beginning, shared everything
with the newcomers to their lands -- though not
always with good results since Western European
notions of property and ownership conflicted with
the Indians who gave the settlers such words as
“consensus.” In an interview with Lakota
Chief Oren Lyons, Bill Moyers commented regretfully
that Western man took the land and the corn and
gave the Indian “firewater” and disease
and confinement on reservations in return. Lyons
answered slowly and thoughtfully. “Yes,”
he said. “But we’re still here. And
I’m still a chief.”
If you will be visiting the Southwest,
clip and save these etiquette guidelines prepared
by the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council of
New Mexico:
--Each pueblo has its own laws governing the use
of cameras (still, movie, video, digital, or cell),
sketching, and painting on location. Most pueblos
require a permit. Even with a permit, ask for permission
before photographing any person, and offer a small
donation for the privilege. Remember that cameras
and film can be confiscated.
--Drive slowly. Children and pets play near the
roads and are not accustomed to fast-moving vehicles
on their quiet lands.
--Prohibition laws on most pueblos forbid the carrying
or use of alcohol, drugs, and firearms.
--Silence is mandatory during all pueblo ceremonies.
This means no questions about ceremonies or dances
while they are underway, no follow-up interviews,
no walking across the dance plaza, and no applauding
after the dance or ceremony. Also, respect the fact
that some subject matter is not for public knowledge.
--Kivas and ceremonial rooms are restricted to use
by pueblo members only. Cemeteries are sacred burial
grounds and are off-limits to non-pueblo members.
--Do not attempt to scale the walls of adobe structures
or climb on top of buildings; the old walls have
withstood centuries of wind, snow, and rain, but
may crumble under hiking boots.
-- Nature is sacred on the pueblos, so littering
is naturally taboo.
About the
Feast Preparation
"Picuris Pueblo: Bountiful banquet"
byShannon Shaw| The New Mexican August
9, 2006
Aromas of sweet prune pies, Pueblo Indian cookies
and bread filled the Gaussoin house in Santa Fe
on Monday as family and friends prepared for the
Picuris Pueblo Feast Day on Thursday.
The group members started cooking early because
they had invited more than 300 people to their home
at Picuris to sit "family style" around
the dinner table Thursday and eat red and green
chile, posole, chicos with beef, green bean and
cabbage stew, potato salad, ham and desserts, said
Connie Tsosie Gaussoin, matriarch of the Gaussoin
family and a renowned jeweler.
"We never turn anyone away who comes to our
house to eat," Gaussoin said. "Sometimes
when outsiders come they expect to be seated first,
but everyone has to wait their turn. We host a very
eclectic group that can be made up of people from
the opera world to jewelers to educators."
All 19 pueblos in the state have a feast day. The
first feast of the year is held at San Ildefonso
Pueblo, and the last one is at Pojoaque Pueblo.
Picuris Pueblo was one of the few to choose its
own saint, said David Gaussion, one of Connie's
sons. Pueblo members embraced St. Lawrence because
he gave riches to the poor, and Picuris was a poor
pueblo at the time, David said. St. Lawrence was
also the patron saint of cooking and received his
martyrdom by being slowly burned to death on a gridiron.
At the Gaussoin house, family members baked the
pies, cookies and bread in an horno in the backyard.
"The horno is one of the most important cooking
tools we have," Connie said.
Loaves of bread were on the kitchen table, and
stacks of pueblo Indian cookies, called tsu-tsu
in Picuris, lined the counters. Connie's sister,
Desbah Tsosie; her sons, David and Wayne Nez Gaussoin;
and daughter, Tazbah, and a friend had been mixing
dough since late Sunday.
Feast Day for many pueblo families is a chance
to see relatives who moved away, become rejuvenated
from the pressures of the outside world and honor
long traditions, David said. As they mixed dough,
he and his siblings talked about how they used to
watch their mother and aunt do all of the cooking,
he said. Feast days were established by the Spanish
who first came here, said Walter Dasheno, a former
Santa Clara Pueblo governor. "They established
churches as their primary contact with the Indian
communities throughout New Mexico. The Indian communities
have kept alive the Spanish missions established,
so each year on particular dates, they honor patron
saints of their communities."
The Picuris Feast Day begins with a morning Mass,
Connie said. After mass, the pueblo will hold traditional
foot races in which men race barefoot. "It's
a hard race to run," David said. Afterward,
everyone will eat and get ready for the basket dance,
a social dance in which everyone participates. Picuris
also has a pole climb, similar to the one at Taos
Pueblo.
Soon the Gaussoin family will pack up everything
they have prepared to take it to Picuris for their
guests. They will use the original wood-burning
stove that was left by Connie's mother and aunt
and cook the remaining foods for the feast.
"From watching my mother and aunt all these
years, they taught us how to do this and carry on
our traditions because it's very important that
we continue," Connie said. "It's a lot
of hard work, and the next generation just has to
be strong and keep going."
Contact
Shannon Shaw at 995-3837 or sshaw@sfnewmexican.com
Pueblo
Feast Days Calendar 2006
Pueblo Indian
Cultural Center restaurant
"Driving Cross-Country For A Tiwa Taco"
Reprinted by permission from Indian
Country Today By Brenda Norrell
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- When the doors flung open at
the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center restaurant, a
tourist rushed in and exclaimed, "I've driven
all the way from Minnesota for this food!"
Tourists, however, aren't the only ones driving
cross-country for the Tiwa tacos, blue corn enchiladas,
bread pudding and new line of low-carb, mouth-watering
entrees at the Pueblo Harvest Cafe.
Burt Wilson, Navajo head cook and assistant manager,
said he learned to cook in Gallup, N.M. "They
wanted their mutton and blue corn meal mush,"
Wilson said of the Navajo elderly in the nursing
homes where he learned his craft.
"But I didn't learn how to make fry bread until
I got here. It's not as easy as it looks."
Now, he?s dishing up the in-demand Tiwa taco. It?s
the Tiwa version of an Indian taco, beginning with
one-quarter piece of fry bread topped with beans
and the fixings - pinto beans, shredded lettuce,
chopped tomato and grated cheese. Then, it's topped
with another quarter piece of fry bread.
"That's what we call a Tiwa taco."
The secret of the Tiwa taco is in the maker of
the fry bread dough, Acoma Pueblo's Zelda Chaplin.
She has the touch. Serious fry bread eaters ask
for her by name. "We let Zelda make the dough.
Some people come in and ask, 'Is Zelda here today?'"
Wilson said.
Blue corn enchiladas and the Navajo favorite mutton
stew are the latest additions to the menu.
As for mutton stew, Wilson said, "It?s a little
more popular than I thought it would be."
Although the bread pudding is prized, when the
platters and posole bowls are finished, Wilson said,
"Not a lot of people go for desserts because
they feel so full when they leave here." Wrapped
individually are Pueblo sweets - cinnamon sugar
cookies known as biscochitos and prune pies - for
visitors to take home.
Read
the full report here.
