Railroads - Food Politics of Alliance in a California Frontier Chinatown, an article summary

 

Food Politics of Alliance ina California Frontier Chinatown

Author(s): Charlotte K. Sunseri

Source: International Journal of Historical Archaeology , June 2015, Vol. 19, No. 2 (June 2015), pp. 416-431

Published by: Springer

Article Summary

This article’s focus is on how Chinese and Native Americans who lived in the town of Mono Mills, California during the post-Gold Rush era (1880-1917) may have interacted.  It cites archaeological evidence that suggests these two communities shared foodstuffs as well as preparation items.

My interest is in the documentation of the foodstuffs available to people at the time.

Pages 421 – 423 list items that were associated with households in Chinatown:

·         “a large cache of over a hundred pine nuts …  acquired from … local pinyon, shelled, and parched for household consumption”

·         “several items likely acquired from the company general store, including canned fruit and bottles of medicine and beverages”

·         “brown stoneware vessels used to store cooking ingredients”

·         “cuttlefish and vertebrate faunal remains”

o   “dominant meats consumed were cuts of beef and pork, waterfowl, chickens, and fish”, along with sheep/goats and rabbits/hares

o   “These were supplemented with locally available wild game, fowl, and fish”

·         “Nga Hu and Tsao Tsun stoneware vessels traditionally used to transport and store soy sauce, black vinegar, peanut oil, and liquor used for cooking and drinking”

·         “Fut How Nga Peng vessels, traditionally associated with tofu, sweet bean paste, beans, pickled vegetables, shrimp paste, sugar, and condiments”

The specific cuts of meat were identified:

The beef cuts evident at the site include costly short loin, sirloin, and ribs and less-expensive short ribs and fore- and hindshanks. … Pork-based dishes likely included pork loins and hams as well as spare ribs and dishes flavored with pigs' feet…

There was speculation on how the meat was acquired:

Research team transcriptions of ledger records from a local supplier at the Hammond Station store suggest that local ranchers and butchers could have supplied much domestic stock to Mono Mills’ kitchens. However, evidence of powered saw marks far outnumber those chop and handsaw patterns that might be expected from cottage industry butchery operations.... These marks suggest that national, railroad-based chains of supply and centralized redistribution from larger processing centers factored larger in provisioning the camp.

The article points out how the presence of the pine nuts was an indicator of possible interaction between the Chinese and the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Paiute:

The presence of locally available pine nuts is interesting in the Chinatown household, given that the sale of pine nuts is widely believed to be a main source of income for Paiute households during the historic era … as well as a primary food supply during the winter… Further, this household's use of this ingredient is an outlier, as many other studies of Chinatown households across the West do not mention the presence of pine nuts…

Interestingly, too, are the utensils that indicate the Chinese may have had more interaction with the Paiute people.  Glass flakes that were knapped like obsidian to give them a cutting edge were found.

Not only do these artifacts reflect smaller scales of expert labor, but they also suggest an intimacy between neighborhood practitioners that extended to experimentation with materials, as hinted at by an in-process button blank of obsidian at the Chinatown cabin ... Could it be that Kutzadika'a master flintknappers were sharing their familiar obsidians with new neighbors?

The exchange appeared to go the other way, too: “the nearby Paiute neighborhood also contained Chinese-made ceramics, including a porcelain flat-bottom spoon with Four Flowers design”.  The picture above of the woven reed spoon shows a similarity to this design and alludes to “culinary performances familiar to both communities where such shallow implement styles would be at home.” (pg 324)

In fact, the author found this story recounted by a railroad superintendent (pg 425):

[A] Chinese boarding house cook named Tim was fired after feeding boarders squirrel stew daily in place of the quality beef cuts that he stole and gave as gifts to his Paiute friends.

This article brings a dimension of California food history that I had not expected to find – documentation of interactions between a Chinese community and its Paiute neighbors.  It points out that such exchanges may have been beneficial beyond mere caloric consumption.  During that time period in California history there was a strong anti-Chinese and anti-Indian sentiment and such ties may have may have strengthened and protected both groups against it.