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Article: Culture on a cracker.(smoked salmon)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Sunset
- Article date:
- August 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Sunset Publishing Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Smoked salmon is a Native American delicacy we Westerners can't get enough of
* Meriwether Lewis's first taste of Pacific salmon, offered by a Shoshone warrior on an August evening in 1805, was doubly auspicious. First, it convinced the explorer that he was on a riparian route to the Pacific. Second, it was dilicious. In his usual meticulous journaling, he noted, "I eat [it] with a very good relish."
Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest and their upriver cousins had been drying and smoking salmon for hundreds of years before Lewis and Clark's expedition. It was a cultural foundation as well as a staple food. The seasonal salmon runs were a ...