The Indians natives to North America have many tales about crafty, roving shape shifters called Tricksters. The Winnebago tribe in the northern part of the United States tells a tale of a trickster that became so hungry during the winter that he used organs from an Elk to change his sex from male to female in order to marry a chieftain’s son and have access to the tribes’ winter provisions. The trickster eventually is discovered as not being human and is chased from the Indian camp, where he resumes his nomadic lifestyle.

The stories are very different by many literary definitions but they both have the same theme, which is that food is often the basis of writing because it’s so important in life. Although their situations are very different, Rowlandson and Trickster are both at risk for starvation if they don’t find food for themselves. Rowlandson often had to beg for her food and maybe even steal although she never mentioned stealing in her narrative. Many of the foods she forced herself to eat were foreign to her as a puritan, and still today are taboo to eat in America. The Native Americans that are described in the narrative are generally foragers and hunters, and therefore ate whatever they could find that was edible. They often ate the common nuts, beans, and berries that the puritans were used to be eating, but there was also a wide variety of other foods that Mary Rowlandson had probably never even dreamed of eating, or ever dreamed that she would have to eat.

They would pick up old bones, and cut them in pieces at the joynts, and if they were full of wormes and maggots, they would scald them over the fire to make the vermine come out, and then boile them, and drink up the Liquor, and then beat the geat ends of them in a Morter, and so eat them. They would eat Horses guts, and ears, and all sorts of wild birds which they could catch: also Bear, Vennison, Beaver, Tortise, Frogs, Squirrels, Dogs, Skunks, Rattle-snakes; yea, the very Bark of Trees; besides all sorts of creatures, and provision which they plundered from the English (Rowlandson, 223).

Rowlandson focuses so much on food because her only options were to find her own food by any means or simply starve to death.

Trickster also has shelter and starvation on his mind by the time winter rolls around. After Trickster has become female he goes to the Indian camp where the chieftain’s son falls immediately in love with her.

The chief’s son liked her very much. Immediately they prepared dried corn for her and they boiled slit bear ribs. That was why Trickster was getting married, of course. When this food was ready they put it in a dish, cooled it, and placed it in front of Trickster. He devoured it at once. There she (Trickster) remained (The Winnebago Trickster Cycle, 79).

The tribe that is being fooled by Trickster offers him a feast when he is supposed to marry the chief’s son. This just another example of how food was always the center of life with the Native American’s and becomes associated with happiness because when happy occasions occur they celebrate with feasts and big meals.

Four hundred years is a long time, and traditions have changed since then, right? Wrong! Even today people in America still celebrate happy occasions with dinners and feasts. The biggest parts of many people’s lives are centered on food even today. Holiday’s have become families getting together and having lunch or dinner, dating couples traditionally have dinner together, bread and wine are consumed in reference to the blood and body of Christ in church, after a wedding there is usually food and almost always a cake. Even during funerals there is usually a dinner after the ceremony to celebrate the life of the deceased. Our lives today are still just as focused on food as the Native Americans and Puritans of hundreds of years ago. I personally hope this tradition never dies out, but I don’t believe it ever will. After all, humans will always need food to survive and if you’re going to eat it you should make it special every time.