goldfields

In the reminiscences collected by C.C. Royce, John Bidwell recalled the time when the Indians provided a tasty meal made of ground roasted grasshoppers to Fremont’s troops.  John C. Fremont, “the Great Pathfinder,” returned to California on his third exploratory trip in the fall of 1845. By the time they reached the valley, his men were out of provisions, and grateful for anything they could get from the natives. Bidwell recalled:

Fremont’s party got out of provisions, but staid as near where Fremont had told them as possible, and got provisions from the Indians. They staid as long as they could, but when the provisions gave out they went to the San Joaquin Valley and there found the others, and his exploring party was again united.  The Indians’ provision was a kind of meal. The men were fond of it. It was rich, pleasant, and spicy to the taste. The calls upon the Indians being urgent, caused them to become rather careless in grinding the aforesaid meal, and Fremont’s men discovered legs, wings, and heads of grasshoppers in it. The meal was simply grasshoppers pounded and pulverized in the usual way. Their fondness for the meal from that time rapidly waned, but not before some had become quite sleek and fat.

“Rich, pleasant, and spicy!” Sounds nourishing too. Anyone want to try some?

Addresses, reminiscences, etc. of General John Bidwell. Compiled by C.C. Royce, can be accessed at the Library of Congress’s American Memory project.

George Moses Gray continues his recollections about California grasshoppers:

When I told the General about it [i.e., Indians harvesting grasshoppers] he said, “I have eaten a great many good grasshopper pancakes,” and told me the following story.

He said, “When I lived in the Adobe house two men from the East were staying with me overnight. They had pancakes for breakfast. As they finished easting Nopaney, his cook and housekeeper, came in and said, ‘General, no more pancakes. Grasshopper meal all gone.’ One of the men said, “‘What! We have not been eating grasshoppers, have we?’ The General said, ‘You certainly have.’ They both said, ‘We don’t believe it.'”

The General said, “Nopaney, bring in the can you had the meal in.” She did and the General knocked on the bottom of the can and poured the contents on to a plate and passed it around, and when they saw the little pieces of legs, they believed him and said they were good anyway.

Nopaney wouldn’t have called Bidwell “General” at that time. I don’t know what she would have called  him, but he was a Major in the California Battalion back when he lived in the adobe house.  But by the time Gray knew Bidwell, everyone called him General, so that’s the term Gray used.

Here in Northern California the grasshoppers are plentiful this year, and they are hungry and looking for a good meal.  According to a news report on KNVN:

The farm advisor from the UC Cooperative Extension says the young grasshoppers are making their way down from the foothills in search of anything green they can eat.  “They’ll strip vegetable crops and vegetable gardens,” Joseph Connell, the UC Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor said.

Connell says the larger than average population this year is due mostly to the wet spring in 2011.  “Last year was a nice wet year, lots of feed. We had a chance for the population to build up. They lay eggs in the fall, those hatch in the spring so we got a lot more hoppers this year,” Connell said.

I haven’t noticed a lot of grasshoppers on my place, but I have chickens, and that may be keeping the population down.

The California Indians would not have seen a big grasshopper year as a bane, but a boon.

George M. Gray, Bidwell’s ranch manager, reminisced about the Indians and grasshoppers in 1938 for the Sandy Gulch News.

The year 1882 was a grasshopper year. They hatched up in the foothills and came down in to the vineyards by the millions and started in eating the leaves, stripping the vines clean as they traveled west. . . .

One day I saw the squaws and two old Indians hurrying up to the vineyard as fast as they could go. I watched to see what they were going to do. The Indian men cleaned off the dry grass from a spot eight feet square and dug three holes about two feet across and three feet deep, and the squaws went over to the creek and cut a handful of willow brush and went around a four acre piece of land driving the grasshoppers to the center where the holes were, and drawing nearer all the time.

The two men had made a fire of dry brush and were heating four round stones. When the others had the grasshoppers driven into the holes they rushed up and covered up the holes, then put the hoppers into sacks and put the hot stones into the sacks too, and rolled the stones back and forth and in a few minutes they had a quart or more of nice fine well cooked grasshopper meal.  One of the old men with his face smiling all over, said to me, “Dis be a fine good year. Lots of grasshoppers.”

So now, if you are infested with grasshoppers, you know what to do. Don’t poison them—eat them!