Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 62 e tribal people of the future state of Montana ate in the morning if they were hungry and food was available. e Nez Perce, living principally in Idaho, hunted buffalo east of the Divide. eir breakfast might simply be whatever was left over from the previous night's dinner. Seasonal foods — fish, berries, roots — were preserved. In the fall, they gathered a black moss and baked it with camas bulbs to dry it. Reconstituted in water, it made a nourishing winter porridge called "hopop." It is axiomatic that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." is is particu- larly true if you happen to be a cereal manufacturer. But in the 1800's, breakfasts were as varied as the diverse people who consumed them. In fact, merely surviving breakfast might have been more important than the nutrition it provided. Oysters, whiskey, a tarry sludge concocted from dehydrated coffee mixed with chicory and occasionally "extended" with sawdust could not have done much to im- prove the life expectancy of frontier Americans. is "coffee essence" was provided to the military during the Civil War years, and gradually evolved into a commer- cial product called Camp Coffee — though probably without the sawdust. On April 1, 1865, the steamboat Bertrand sank into the mud of the Missouri River, north of Omaha, Nebraska. Its destination had been Fort Benton, Montana Territory. Had it arrived, much of its cargo would have been taken by ox or mule train to the mining camps of Virginia City and Helena, and the bustling trade center of Deer Lodge. When the channel of the Missouri changed, the ship was entombed under 30 feet of silt. Rediscovered in 1968, its recovered cargo included tinned peaches, oysters, tomatoes, honey and coffee essence. Chemical analysis found them tasteless and colorless, but bacteria-free. O NE MORNING IN MID-AUGUST, 1805, MERIWETHER LEWIS OF PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON'S CORPS OF DISCOVERY AWOKE "AS HUNGARY [SIC] AS A WOLF." Having a scant two pounds of flour left, he had it divided in half and cooked half with berries. With typically inventive spelling he declared, "On this new fashioned pudding four of us breakfasted, giving a pretty good allowance also to the Chief [Cameahwait] who declared it the best thing he had taisted for a long time." is is probably one of Mon- tana's earliest written breakfast menus. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE PHOTO This coffee mill came from a butcher shop in Virginia City at the height of the Gold Rush. D E PA R T M E N T H E R I TA G E by LY N D E L M E I K L E B RE A KFAST MONTANA

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