LCV Winter 2013-14 - (Page 72)

correct is the continuing attribution of tamales in Louisiana to its "Spanish" heritage. "Tamales are indigenous foods of North America, including the U.S. South and Southwest and Mexico," Caldwell observes. "The only significant Spanish contribution to tamales was to bring hogs to the Western Hemisphere, thereby offering a new ingredient to the ancient food." "The word 'tamale' comes from the Nahuatl word tamalii, and the Aztecs made more than 40 types of them. But cornmeal wrapped in corn husks (shuckbreads), with various fillings, were common across the Americas at the time of first European contact," according to Caldwell. "Most tribes of the Southwest United States call the food tamale, but the Choctaw have banaha, NCIENT FOOD OF THE ZTEC which is made of cornmeal rather than masa. Banaha usually AYA AND HOCTAW includes peas or beans mixed into the dough." Reevaluation of indigenous foodways in Central America is uncovering fascinating information. Research into the ancient and contemporary Mayan diet has revealed new insight into the ouisiana cuisine often differs markedly from one region to tamale's significance. Anthropologist Karl Taube concludes that another, but people statewide share an appreciation for the tamale-not the tortilla-served as the basis of the diet of tamales. Roadside stands, snowball shops, grocery stores, the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization. He argues that a recurring restaurants and industrial as well as domestic kitchens image scholars previously interpreted as conch shells actually provide residents with a variety of tamales. depicted wrapped tamales. Their A nationwide hot tamale craze of the misreading failed to grasp the late 19th and early 20th centuries certainly spiritual significance the tamale left its mark on the United States, but it played as an offering to the gods. obscured the tamale's precursors that Renderings of the maize Native Americans in our region prepared tamale appeared more often than and consumed centuries earlier. Add any other image in Mayan art. The culinary practices carried here in the 1700s contemporary Mayan diet via trade among Louisiana's French settlers includes ongoing versions of the and the Spanish and Native Americans from pre-Columbian food offerings on the Southwest, and one finds Louisiana's home altars. tamale traditions deeply embedded, if not Mayan scholar Don Domingo well plumbed. Dzul Poot cited his grandmother's words to explain the tradition: Tamales in Mayan and Louisiana Native "The baked tamale has a deeper American Cultures significance than a mere meal. It The state's tamale belt, which straddles symbolizes the dead wrapped for the northwestern and central regions, is burial and entombed in the pib studied by folklorist Dr. Dayna Bowker Lee. (pit-oven), only to rise again." "To my knowledge, tamales as we know The original vegetarian tamale them entered northwestern Louisiana via changed radically after the the Couhuiltecan and mestizo soldiers at Spanish conquest introduced pork Los Adaes," Lee notes. "However, there are and pork fat to the Mayan diet. some precedents. The Jesuits documented The general story suggests that what they called a tamale among the late this form of the Southwestern As the 1909 sheet music of "The Hot Tamale Man" demonstrates, 17th century Caddo in east Texas, described tamale entered Louisiana via the many street vendors of the spicy treat were not Hispanic. as watermelon, gourd and sunflower seeds Spanish borderlands in the early mixed with corn to produce 'very fine 1700s. While the Mayan tamales tamales.' " may have been vegetarian, Caldwell thinks tribes in our region Robert Caldwell, a member of the Choctaw-Apache Tribal likely enjoyed various meats as well as beans and other Council (Sabine Parish), is completing a book on his tribe's ingredients in their tamales. foodways. Caldwell earned a master's degree from Northwestern In 1976, when the town of Zwolle launched its first Tamale State University in Natchitoches in 2011 and is currently enrolled in Fiesta, the festival name highlighted the area's Spanish heritage, the Transatlantic History Ph.D. program at the University of Texas at but the celebration now also acknowledges the Native American Arlington. component to this story. For almost 40 years, tens of thousands of One of the misconceptions Caldwell hopes his work will help to pork tamales have been consumed during each October festival. A M - C A , L HISTORIC AMERICAN SHEET MUSIC, DUKE UNIVERSITY RARE BOOK, MANUSCRIPT, AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY 72 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES * Winter 2013-14 

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