Blueberries and poets

January 8.

Trees, etc., covered with a dense hoar frost. It is not leaf - like, but composed of large spiculæ —spear like — on the northeast sides of the twigs, the side from which the mist was blown. All trees are bristling with these spiculæ on that side, especially firs and arbor vitæ.


They taught us not only the use of corn and how to plant it, but also of whortleberries and how to dry them for winter, and made us baskets to put them in. We should have hesitated long to eat some kinds, if they had not set us the example, knowing by old experience that they were not only harmless but salutary. I have added a few to my number of edible berries by walking behind an Indian in Maine, who ate such as I never thought of tasting before. Of course they made a much greater account of wild fruits than we do.

It appears from the above evidence that the Indians used their dried berries commonly in the form of huckleberry cake, and also of huckleberry porridge or pudding. What we call huckleberry cake, made of Indian meal and huckleberries, was evidently the principal cake of the aborigines, and was generally known and used by them all over this part of North America, as much or more than plum-cake by us. They enjoyed it all alone ages before our ancestors heard of Indian meal or huckleberries.

We have no national cake so universal and well known as this was in all parts of the country where corn and huckleberries grew. If you had travelled here a thousand years ago, it would probably have been offered you alike on the Connecticut, the Potomac, the Niagara, the Ottawa, and the Mississippi.

Botanists have long been inclined to associate this family in some way with Mt. Ida, and, according to Tournefort arrange [ sic ] whortleberries were what the ancients meant by the vine of Mt. Ida, and the common English raspberry is called Rubus Idæus from the old Greek name. The truth of it seems to be that blueberries and raspberries flourish best in cool and airy situations on hills and mountains, and I can easily believe that something like them, at least, grows on Mt. Ida. But Mt. Monadnock is as good as Mt. Ida, and probably better for blueberries, though it does not [ sic ] mean “bad rock,” — but the worst rocks are the best for blueberries and for poets.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1861

The Indians used their dried berries commonly in the form of huckleberry cake, and also of huckleberry porridge or pudding. It would probably have been offered you alike on the Connecticut, the Potomac, the Niagara, the Ottawa, and the Mississippi. See December 30, 1860 ("The Whortleberry Family"); January 3, 1861 ("The berries which I celebrate appear to have a range -- most of them — very nearly coterminous with what has been called the Algonquin Family of Indians, whose territories are now occupied by the Eastern, Middle, and Northwestern States and the Canadas")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023