Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [139]
20 filled with their own gravy James M. Sanderson, “Above All Other Birds,” in American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, Molly O’Neill, ed. (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2007), 38.
22 “Some morning in the month of April” T. A. Bereman, “The Boom of the Prairie Chicken,” Science, n.s. 22, no. 546 (1893), 22-23.
22 among the wildest of animals Frances Hamerstrom, Strictly for the Chickens (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1980).
23 Charles Ranhofer of New York’s Charles Ranhofer, The Epicurean (New York: Charles Ranhofer, 1894), 643.
23 “only tolerable in point of flavor” The Journals of the Expedition Under the Command of Capts. Lewis and Clark, Nicholas Biddle, ed. (New York: Heritage Press, 1962), 398.
23 resented having to stuff their skins Hamerstrom, Strictly for the Chickens, 65.
24 one 1887 dinner at Twain’s house Evelyn L. Beilenson, Early American Cooking: Recipes from America’s Historic Sites (White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press, 1985), 38.
25 words like “ocean” and “sea” John Madson, Where the Sky Began: Land of the Tallgrass Prairie (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1982), 14.
25 calls such land “food deserts” Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 34.
25 230 species Janine Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997), 25.
25 French or Belgian name Madson, Where the Sky Began, 5.
26 periodic burns and occasional grazing Personal communications, Scott Simpson, Dec. 22, 2006, and Terry Esker, Apr. 6, 2007.
26 “Beyond the road” Twain, Autobiography, 13.
27 In 1836 an eight-mile-wide blaze Prairie Establishment and Landscaping (Springfield: Illinois Division of Natural Heritage, Natural Heritage Technical Publications, no. 2, 1997), 3.
27 the same word, sce-tay Madson, Where the Sky Began, 48.
27 “a Cloudy morning & Smokey all Day” William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, Journals, Mar. 6, 1805.
28 Each hen typically spends five days Hamerstrom, Strictly for the Chickens, 94.
29 Prairie Chickens Stewed Whole Juliet Corson, Practical American Cookery and Household Management (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1886), 227.
29 “permanent ambition” Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 62-63.
29 14 million of the birds Scott Simpson, “Prairie Chickens: Promoting a Population ‘Boom,’” Illinois Steward 10, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 21.
30 the Nantucketer “lives on the sea” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851; New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 85.
30 “the land was rolling” Twain, Roughing It, 6.
30 Prairie Chicken clan Gilbert L. Wilson, Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians (1917; St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), xix.
30 “soft and easy to work” Ibid., 9.
30 “a great part [of northern Illinois]” Quoted in Madson, Where the Sky Began, 30.
30 fourteen oxen pulling a hundred-pound Ibid., 206.
31 more than a hundred daily trains John F. Stover, “Railroads,” in The Reader’s Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 906-10.
32 author Ann Vileisis Ann Vileisis, Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back (Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2008), 15.
32 converted cotton plantations Ibid., 38.
32 spectacular price of five dollars Thomas F. De Voe, The Market Assistant (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), 160.
32 the quickly vanishing Long Island grouse Vileisis, Kitchen Literacy, 60.
32 measured them by the cord and ton Ronald L. Westemeier, “The History of Prairie-Chickens and Their Management in Illinois,” in Selected Papers in Illinois History, 1983, Robert McCluggage, ed. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1985), 20.
33 had fallen to fifty cents De Voe, The Market Assistant, 161.
33 insulated shipping barrels Westemeier, “The History of Prairie-Chickens,” 20.
33 “chicken hunting culture” Ross H. Hier, “History and Hunting the Greater Prairie Chicken: A Rich Tradition,”