Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1913-11-29
BOARD Of
PIONEERS LOADED
TOOTHSOME DAINTiES OF TODAY
HAVE LITTLE OR NOTHING
ON SETTLERS EATS.


ent generation in Iowa, just listen t;
this recipe for mincemeat given b.
State Senator Quigley, who, back i.
the fifties, lived in cabin on the Tur
key river:
peck wild crab apples, the big yellow
kind; one gallon wild grapes floating
in their own wine made with boilec
wild honey.
Here is the rest of the Thanksgiv
ing menu: Baked wild turkey-anc
just so much as canvasback out
classes a domestic, just so and NOR
does the wild turkey surpass the barn
yard variety in richness of flavor.
The pioneer mother used her larg
est Dutch oven. Imagine a big cas-
iron kettle with flat bottom, three
legs, an oval cover with an eye in the
center to poke the poker through, anC
an upright rim to hold on the Goals
and you know what it looked like. Ir
this she put the turkey, raked pill:
of Goals to one corner of the fire
place, set 1t over them, put on the
cover and heaped Goals on top Of 1t.
When done it was turkey with
every whit and atom of it's smell and
taste retained and Of a golden brown.
ness which would make a modern gas
range oven turn sea green to see.
With the turkey was served corn
pone, a raised kind Of corn bread Of
a fluffiness unknown to cooks nova
days; a sauce Of wild plums swee;-
ened with maple sugar; and big
bowl of cracked walnuts, butternuts,
! hickory and hazel nuts.
Now don't you pity the hard lot Of
the Iowa pioneer as he sat down to
his board Thanksgiving day in the
bosom of his large family beside his
roaring log fire?
Every day could have been Thanks
giving down on the Turkey When the
first white men explored it's beauti-
full valley in 1884 they found wild tur-
keys by the thousand flying over it's
waters and nesting in the timber on
it's banks. They borrowed the Sac
Indian name for the stream, Pena-
Kum-Sebo, meaning Turkey water,
and the river has been known by that
name ever since. Several miles up
they padded their canoe into
branch of the main stream where the
turkeys were even more numerous
In the early days there were no
young of the wild turkey, and the
birds stayed along the river the year
round, building their nests in the
timber. A hole was scratched out in,
the ground and the eggs laid in it.
Whenever the hen left the nest she
carefully covered up the eggs with
leaves. So numerous were the wild
turkeys in the first years of settle
ment that the pioneers often shot
them from their cabin doors.
A common method of capturing
them was with rail trap. A square
pen was made in the woods out of
poles laid across each other with
cracks between and covered with a
roof Of poles. Under one side a hole
was dug just large enough to admit
a turkey. little trench led to it
from the outside. In this corn was
strewn. A little pile Of corn was put
inside the pen.
The turkey eating the corn in the
trench spied the corn inside and
went up through the hole into the
pen. Once in. she would under no con-
sideration ever go back through the
trench, but spent her energy poking
her head through the cracks between |
the poles, endeavoring to get out that
way.
The valley of the Turkey river as
it winds through several counties in !
Iowa abounded in early |
days in many other kinds Of game
beside wild turkeys. The names the
branches suggest what they were
Elk, Wolf, Bear. Panther and Doe
creeks are all tributaries of the main
stream.
"There never was, there never will |
ern Iowa." said one of the pioneers
who came to live on the Turkey in
1897. mo one with a gun and an AK
ever needed to lack for food, warmth
Or shelter. There were deer, elk, and
wild turkeys in the woods, bass and
trout in the streams, abundance Of
wild fruits and nuts, wild honey, and
after the first year corn and potatoes
On the breaking"
The few necessities which the
woods did not afford the pioneers OBJ.
aimed at the Lead Mines" as Du-
ououe was called in those days. They
fashioned RATS Of walnut logs and
oaded them with the furs they had
captured and floated down the Tur-
Key and Mississippi to Dubuque. They
;old the raft and the furs and re-
:eived in return provisions, clothing,
powder and utensils and came back
ID river in the skiff they had taken
long on the raft.
In the forties and fifties, many
White men came into the Turkey river
several mills were built, and
he wild turkey, with other villa
zane, became rapidly scarcer. BY the
ixties they had almost disappeared
finally none was left but two warv
Id gobblers who defied hunters for
many months before they were at
asst brought down with rifle. The
wo were worthy representatives OF
he last Of their race, as one weighed
pounds and the other
wenty.
n n MMnDnMIE