There’s a scene in Dances With Wolves where the lead hunter cuts the heart from a freshly killed buffalo, takes a huge bite, and offers the rest to Kevin Costner. Other movies featuring Native American hunters often portray a very similar scene.
Is this something that actually happens, or is it a Hollywood invention?
Asking what Native Americans did is a bit like asking what Americans do today. There wasn’t much consistency across tribes and Native American culture is almost all tribal based.
That said, sure some ate the hearts of fresh kill. There is still related tradition in the South for young deer hunters. A young hunter has to drink the blood of his first kill and that supposedly comes from Native American influence. I can personally attest that it exists to this day.
Inuit people also have similar rituals. It is done out of respect for nature and the idea that blood and energy flows from one living creature to another.
I don’t think that’s supposed to be the heart. I suspect it’s the liver, which isn’t as tough.
Have you ever seen or tried to eat heart? It’s a great big tough knot of muscle, without the marbling fat that makes a steak tender. Even cooked, it fights back. Trying to bite off a piece – heck, even trying to pull it out of a fresh kill – would be a real challenge.
But liver isn’t a muscle, and isn’t anywhere near as tenacious.
I was thinking the same thing. From time to time I’ll buy beef hearts because it’s cheap and it makes a great stew, but cleaning a whole cow heart takes practice and a really sharp knife. I cant imagine trying to gnaw off a chunk of one of those things.
I am no anthropologist but I would wager that is a huge understatement. Modern America is a far more homogeneous society than that of the Native Americans. The lives and rituals of those weirdo Californians is much closer to that of Bible-Belt midwesterners and uptight Bostonians than the indigenous tribes who populated those those regions.
Yes, it was the liver in the movie.
I’ve seen it on the Blackfeet reservation within the last 10 years. If it’s still happening (on important occasions), I don’t doubt it happened in the 1800s. The Lakota Sioux and the Blackfeet are in the same general region. So, yes.
Recently Michaelle Jean raised some controversy by consuming raw seal heart as part of a traditional native practice in Rankin Inlet.
Native Americans often considered raw organs a delicacy, especially the liver and heart. They both eat well and those of us on a high carnivore diet today eat lots of organs. Both the wild liver and heart eat well raw and are much tougher cooked. I like them both raw. They have a crunchy texture that is almost sweet. The heart is eaten best raw when sliced against the muscle. When cooked they are best sauteed but the center left raw like tuna. Raw organs have awesome nutrition. Stay away from corn and grain feed beef and pork as they are high in lectins and oxalates.
I know this is a seven year necro and the person I am replying to hasn’t been around much lately. Still, for posterity’s sake… (whoever happens to perform the next necro)
I just want to suggest that this particular tradition (a young hunter drinking the blood of a deer) probably has less to do with the influence of Native American culture on the south and more to do the appeal of 1984’s Red Dawn amongst the sort of people who own guns (whether they hunt with them or not). The film features such a scene.
Lifelong hunter, been hunting since the late 1960s; and the “drink the blood of your first kill” thing has been around at least since then. I don’t dispute that it’s possible Red Dawn made the practice more known, but at least in Appalachian Virginia I believe it dates back to before my time (I was born in the mid-1950s.) Note that even my time it was a bit of a tongue in cheek practice, so to speak. Meaning, a lot of people would tell a new hunter “You have to drink the blood” as a bit of ritualized hazing, matter of point a lot of people who tried to get people to do it didn’t really think it was something you had to do, and most didn’t, and when the new hunter would balk everyone would laugh and the joke would be revealed that “yeah, most of us don’t do that shit.” But then on the flipside, some people actually did drink the blood. Often to sort of boastfully say “oh yeah, well fuck it I can go ahead and drink it.” I don’t really know if the practice was always partial-joke hazing and partial serious, or if it has its origins (at least in Appalachia) with a practice that was once more solemn and serious and became a bit of a joke over time.
For all we know, it may have been “partial-joke hazing and partial serious” even among the Indians who did it first.
I have a friend who did some trekking with nomadic people in Mongolia a few years ago. And he said that when they slaughtered a sheep, they immediately ate the raw liver. I assume it’s best when it’s fresh. And i know it’s tasty when it’s only barely cooked, so i imagine it’s also tasty raw.
I thought you’re supposed to eat the testicles . . . raw. At least that’s what this documentary indicated . . .
Yeah. It’s more like asking whether Europeans painted themselves blue before battle or built public baths or had kings. Some did each of these (or more than one) - and some thought each of these was a crazy idea.
Right; people are people. If it’s the sort of thing modern folks do, why wouldn’t it be something historical people did, too?
Why is that?
Which tribes are you referring to?