AUTUMN IS A time of plenty on the Olympic Peninsula. The salmon are running. The game is fattened and the berries are ripe.
This is when that king of game birds, the grouse, either blue or ruffed, makes its appearance on the game dinner table. Served with a sauce of fresh chanterelle mushrooms, there is no finer-flavored bird on this or other planets. I would imagine.
Then again, if the old adage quoted by James Swan on his October voyage from Port Townsend to Neah Bay in October 1859 is true, “God sends meat and the devil sends cooks,” it all depends on the method of preparation.
Swan was a historian, Indian Agent and ethnographer who haunts the history of the Olympic Peninsula from the 1850s, when he wrote about life among the Oyster Boys of Shoalwater, now Willapa Bay, to Port Townsend, where he campaigned unsuccessfully to make it the terminus of the transcontinental railroad.
In between, he lived a life of adventure and travel with his Native American friends where he always observed two rules to get along with the locals: He never carried a gun and always ate the food he was offered.
This could be a challenge on the frontier, where the menu might include “half-fledged loons and pelicans” steamed in a pit filled with hot stones and covered with ferns, blankets and sand. Which Swan described as “excellent, once the skin and feathers were removed.”
Another picnic on the beach featured “clams, crab and cold raccoon, with dried salmon, seal and whale oil,” a condiment that Swan described as “infinitely preferable to the stale butter found on restaurant tables.”
All washed down with huckleberry tea.
One winter found the pantry bare, with nothing but salted salmon and potatoes to eat. Game was scarce. Christmas was coming on.
Swan and his messmate, an old sea-dog, Captain Purrington, thought they could not celebrate the day without a goose or a duck or some kind of bird, but nothing came near but a pair of crows. The captain said crows were as good as eagles and owls.
The captain had a reputation for cooking almost anything — including a skunk that he had to throw into the river. He said that was such a pity since it was cooked so nice and brown.
Swan bagged a pair of crows for Christmas dinner that were described as ancient and devoid of fat. The captain made a festive sea-pie out of them with dumplings, salt pork, potatoes and onions.
When Swan said he didn’t like to eat crow, the captain blamed him for shooting the grandfather and grandmother of the flock, saying he should shoot a young one next time. Swan ate the dumplings and potatoes in the sea pie, saying he would never eat crow again, as they were worse than all of the eagles, hawks, owls, beaver, seal, otter and gulls that they previously had eaten for dinner.
What had to be Swan’s finest dining was experienced in Neah Bay, where he produced “savory dishes from a limited larder,” in October 1859.
Swan was visiting his friend Henry Webster, who was trading with the Makah for whale and dogfish oil, fish and furs.
The Makah provided venison that was broiled as steaks or made into a fricandeau, as well as ducks that were stuffed with potatoes, salt pork, pepper and allspice, and served with cranberry sauce. Along with fried codfish tongues, halibut fins, sea urchin roe and puddings, tarts and pies made from salal and cranberries.
All of which remains to be served to this day. Bon appetite.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.