Osafke, Safke

osafke, safke
sofke/sofkee/sofkey/sofky/sofki

George Washington Grayson, 1885

This may be well termed the National dish of the Muscogees, because all make it and is fond of it and is almost always kept in the house.

It is made by pounding a very flinty kind of corn grown for the purpose, and running it through a riddle made of split cane or reed. By this, and a winnowing process, the outer coating of the broken grains is removed. This is then cooked in quantities of three or four gallons; the cooking consisting simply of slowly boiling the grains in a plentiful supply of water, adding occasionally a little lye dripped from strong wood ashes. When done the cooking is so gauged as that the whole consists of about two-thirds soup and one-third hominy.

There being no salt or seasoning of any kind, it is at first rather insipid to one who is not accustomed to it, but almost all persons soon learn to become fond of it. Most Indians prefer it when partly fermented.

Lilah D. Lindsey, 1902

Two gallons hot water, one quart of grits, home pounded is best, boil until grits begin to crack open. Keep kettle full of boiling water, or replenish as it boils away. When grits are tender add lye made from wood ashes, about one teacup, if of ordinary strength. Let it boil slowly for one hour, or until grits are perfectly done, then pour off in crock or jar. Add one gallon of cold water to keep the grits from burning.

This is used for a drink at table or elsewhere. When fresh it is also good with sweet milk. For a cool refreshing drink in sickness, especially with fever, there is no equal.

Charles Gibson, 1918

Shell good, clean and dried flint corn from the cob, enough to have a peck or more of the shelled grain to prepare sofky for several meals. Cover the shelled corn with cool water, and soak over night.

Pound the soaked corn, or a portion, lightly in a wooden mortar enough to break the grains in half. Place the pounded corn in a fanner, and clean out the hulls. Put the clean, broken grain into a large vessel, cover with water and boil until thoroughly done. Add water if necessary from time to time to keep the hominy in a loose fluid. When it is cooked thoroughly, add ash lye solution in the proportion of a cupful to a gallon of the boiling hominy, stirring it regularly for it will scorch easily. Boil the hominy with the ash-lye solution for at least another half hour, then pour it into a stone jar to keep and serve.

“As long as the Indian can eat and drink osafke, he will not go dead.”

Muskogee and Northeastern Oklahoma, 1922

Sofki has been one of the favorite dishes of food for the In­dians, especially among the Creeks.

It is made of corn, pounded into coarse meal, treated with lye and mixed with water. The wet meal is boiled and lye is dripped into it through a sieve filled with wet wood ashes. When the mixture becomes a thick mush, it is removed from the fire and allowed to cool, sometimes ground nuts are added to the mixture.

Sofki is still made and relished by many Indian families.

James H. Hill, ca. 1936-40

They shelled flint corn, put it in cold water, set it aside.

Then removed the corn, put it in a mortar, pounded it lightly, and peeling off the corn-skins, they called it vce aktonke [“pulverized corn”] and sifted off the pounded corn husks, filled a big water kettle called a lehayv-rakko with water, and when it got hot, they put the vce aktonke in, lit a fire under it, not a very big fire, and it slowly simmered, and after quite a while, they . . . poured [the lye] into the corn boiling in water, and when the vce aktonke is cooked with lots of juice, they poured it in a sofkee jar.

Beulah Simms, 1970

Place about three pounds flint corn (vce-cvlvtwe) or white corn (vce-hvtke) in a bucket of water and let the mixture stand until the kernels are soft.

Place the corn, while still wet, in a mortar (keco) and pound with a pestle (kecvpe) until the grains of corn are in small kernels. Separate the finer grains (vce enfolotkv) from the larger grains (safke nērkv). You now have your corn ready to be boiled into safke. (Safke nērkv may now be purchased in most all supermarkets and may be called for as hominy grits or safke grits.)

Place the safke nērkv in a large kettle of water, about three gallons of water to three pounds of corn, and place the kettle over a low hot fire. It is better if cooked in an iron kettle over a wood fire out-of-doors. When the mixture comes to a hard boil, add kvpe-cvfke, a drop at a time until the corn turns a slight yellow. Continue to boil, stirring often so that the mixture will not burn, until the liquid thickens and the corn is soft.

Safke may be served while still hot, however, some prefer it cold. It is best served with meat dishes. Safke may also be served with cream and sugar. When permitted to set a few days, especially in warm weather, it becomes fermented and then it is known as safke toksē and is preferred by some Creek Indians to fresh safke. Safke toksē is not intoxicating, as some people believe.

American Indian Recipes, 1970

Need two gallons of flint or white corn. This will make about five gallons of sour corn. To every mortar full of corn add one or two cups of hot water and handful of strong ashes or soda and work with pestle until it is skinned or peeled and work all of the two gallons. Sift corn through pan which has holes made by number twenty nails. After it is sifted put back in mortar and crack with pestle and keep sifting til all is finished and all the skin and meal is clean. Place black pot over fire with about five buckets of clean water and start cooking unless you prefer to soak over night and then cook.

After the corn is cooked then put the ash water in and cook down til all four or five quarts of liquid is gone and corn turns light brown.

When finished, put corn in five gallon crock jar and cover with clean wet cloth and lid, keep from air and place in a warm corner to turn sour overnight. To turn sour faster put a buffalo horn (made into a spoon) at the bottom of the jar.

Cookbook of the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma, 1976

Recipe for small families:  Clean and wash one quart sofky corn. Put corn in large porcelain or cast iron cooking pot. Cook about three hours and add one-half cup of lye, gradually, and stirring corn all the while. Continue cooking until corn is very tender.

Hattie Beaver, 1991

Among many American tribes, maize (vce) has always been a principal food. Years before explorers came to this country, American Indians were planting and cultivating maize.

There are many ways Creek and Seminole women prepare corn for food. It is used for breads, vegetables, main dishes (cooked with meats), desserts, and drinks. A favorite drink and food among the Creek and Seminole down through the ages has been sofke. Sofke is made from flint or field corn.

In preparing corn for sofke, they shelled dry corn from the cob. The corn was soaked in water with drip lye until hulls could be removed. The hulls were removed and the corn washed several times. The placed the corn in a wooden mortar (keco) and pounded it with a pestle (kecvpe) until the corn was pounded into small pieces. After the corn was pounded, the grit was removed by sifting in a sofke sifter.

While they were pounding the corn, they had ready a big pot (le-ocv) of hot water. They placed the prepared corn in the hot water and cooked it until tender. After the sofke was done, a small amount of drip lye was added—just enough to give a light tan color to sofke.

Seasoning was not added to sofke, but many of the younger generation today prefer to drink it with sugar.

Today, many supermarkets carry prepared sofke grits or hominy grits, thus making it easier for the working woman to continue to serve sofke to this generation.

Native American Recipes, 1996

Put three quarts hominy corn or grits into five gallons water. Add one pint ash lye. Cook for three hours or until the corn is tender.

May be served warm or cold. For sour sofkey let it stand for a day or two.

Stephen Carson, 2006

Boil four gallons water. Put four cups dry corn in the boiling water and let cook for a few hours. Put one-quarter cup of sofkee lye in pot and let cook for one hour.

Bertha Tilkens, 2009

To make sofke using today’s modern way of cooking: Fill a four-quart crock-pot about three-quarters full of water. Add two and one-half cups of dry hominy or white corn. Cook for two and one-half hours, then add the ash drippings until the flavor is right and the mixture looks a little cloudy. Cook until the corn is soft, then serve either hot or cold.

“Creek Vocabulary and Verb Paradigms with Occasional Ethnographic Notes” by George Washington Grayson, Bureau of American Ethnology manuscript 568a (Eufaula, I.T., 1885), quoted in A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee: With Notes on the Florida and Oklahoma Seminole Dialects of Creek by Jack B. Martin and Margaret McKane Mauldin (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).

“Sofki” by John D. Benedict, in Muskogee and Northeastern Oklahoma (Chicago, IL: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1922).

“Sof-ke” by Hattie Beaver, in Four Circles of Learning (Oklahoma City, OK: Oklahoma State Department of Education, 1991).

Other Sources

Sustainable Sovereignty

The following article was originally published in Orion Magazine, a national bimonthly focusing on nature/culture/place. It has also been available on the Mvskoke Country website, but this is the first time it has appeared in the Muscogee Nation News. Two annual growing seasons have come and gone since I profiled MFSI and the Wilson community garden in 2009; you can find more current information at http://www.mvskokefood.org/ and http://wilson-ndn-community.99k.org/garden/garden.html

Mvskoke farmer Barton Williams is in the fields every day now, picking produce from two large plots sponsored by the Wilson Indian Community of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.  Williams is the community’s elected leader; he and several other dedicated volunteers are tending the typical garden fare—cabbage and okra, peppers and tomatoes—while fending off hungry deer, raccoons, squirrels, and insects.  They’ve also planted a couple of distinctively Mvskoke crops:  Indian pumpkins, which are good for frying; and safke corn, an heirloom variety used to make a traditional dish similar to hominy.  Later in the season, they’ll offer low-cost food baskets to local residents.  People are already asking when the corn will be in.

Wilson Indian Community is also hosting training sessions with specialists from the state extension service and inviting other growers in the area to attend.  The community center is next to the local high school, so this fall they’ll erect a greenhouse and get students involved in the effort.  And some of the older folks have begun sharing heirloom seeds and laying plans to start a seed bank.  “We didn’t realize how big this thing was really going to get,” says Rita Williams, Barton’s wife.  All this in just their first few months as a Community Food Project funded by a small USDA grant, which they secured with the help of the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative.

MFSI formed in 2005 when community activists and tribal government staffers began meeting to discuss the modern food system and the problems it creates for nutrition, health care, elder services, cultural preservation, local economies, and the natural environment.  The great seal of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, adopted in the nineteenth century, features a plow and a sheaf of wheat in an open field, testimony to the ancient agricultural heritage of the Mvskoke people.  But the forced allotment of tribal lands a hundred years ago broke up these communal traditions, and today few Mvskokes are involved in producing their own food.  Now incorporated as an independent nonprofit, MFSI supports sustainable agriculture, economic development, community organizing, and cultural education among “the Mvskoke people and their neighbors” in eastern Oklahoma.

Food is connected to just about everything else in Mvskoke life, including politics and religion.  Many of the matrilineal clans take their name from a game animal, domesticated plant, or other indigenous staple:  Ecovlke (Deer clan), Vhvlvkvlke (Sweet Potato clan), and Ocevlke (Hickory Nut clan), for example.  The Mvskoke calendar culminates in posketv, known in English as Green Corn, a four-day ceremony celebrating the harvest and the beginning of a new year.  And sovereignty is the dominant trope of Indian affairs, at least under the current federalist regime, so it’s not surprising that grassroots leaders would associate sustenance with self-determination in launching the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative.

One of the first MFSI projects was a 2006 event on “Food as Medicine,” where tribal elders and health experts discussed the nutritional benefits of traditional foods.  More recently, their “Return to Your Roots” symposium in the spring of 2009 brought together more than a dozen presenters exploring the historical, cultural, spiritual, and practical aspects of food sovereignty.  This landmark event was cosponsored by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and all three branches of tribal government were represented among those who addressed the audience.  Indigenous leaders have always worked to sustain tribal sovereignty, and many are now pioneering uniquely indigenous approaches to sustainability in an era of climate crisis.

Heritage farming isn’t the only answer, but it’s a start—especially in an impoverished, rural corner of Indian country.  Earlier this year, MFSI bought a tiller and helped more than thirty area households break ground on family gardens.  And they’re already working with a second Mvskoke community to establish another communal plot, this one in a county that the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture has classified as a “food desert,” where residents have poor access to supermarkets, much less homegrown produce.  With a little rain and some hard work, Mvskoke corn and pumpkins may be sprouting all over the Muscogee (Creek) Nation someday soon.

Muscogee Nation News, October 2011

Sources:

Orion Magazine, November-December 2009

Hvyuce, “Little Harvest”

In one story from Mvskoke oral tradition, it is said that an old woman was living in a certain place.  She lived alone until an orphan boy came to be with her.  He learned to hunt and provide meat, while she fed him tasty dishes made from a mysterious ingredient.

One day he spied on her and discovered that the food came from her body:  it was corn, and she was the corn mother.  She taught the orphan boy how to care for this new grain, and how to use the different varieties.  Then she sent him on a long journey.

Later, when he returned with a wife, the old woman’s house was gone.  The place was occupied instead by tall, green stalks of corn.  And it has been the essential Mvskoke food ever since.

Mvskoke people have acknowledged their dependence on this sacred staple from time immemorial.  Even today, the most important annual event at our ceremonial grounds is posketv, known in English as “Green Corn” because it marks the ripening of a new corn crop.

One of the earliest written accounts of the Green Corn ceremony was recorded in 1775 by British-American naturalist William Bartram.  He described it as the “principal festival” and “most solemn celebration” in Mvskoke country.  Posketv is a “feast of first fruits” that occurs when the “new crops of corn are arrived to perfect maturity.”

Each Mvskoke town celebrates separately, Bartram noted, “when their own harvest is ready.”  After a period of cleaning and preparation, of fasting and purification, a new fire is struck in the town square.

“Then the women go forth to the harvest field, and bring from thence new corn and fruits, which being prepared in the best manner, in various dishes, and drink withal, is brought with solemnity to the square, where the people are assembled, apparelled in their new clothes and decorations.”

The men of the town partake together, then the women and children eat at their homes.  That evening all “repair to the public square, where they dance, sing, and rejoice during the whole night, observing a proper and exemplary decorum.”

Green Corn thus signals the end of one annual cycle and the beginning of another.  It typically happens in the days after summer solstice, initiating the Mvskoke month of Hvyuce, a designation offering further evidence of our agricultural heritage.

The name was formed by modifying the word hvyo, “harvest,” with the diminutive suffix –uce, “little.”  So the first month of the Mvskoke year is Hvyuce, “Little Harvest.”  Like other months in cokv-walv Mvskoke, it has a counterpart in the yearly sequence—in this case, the month that follows:  Hvyo-Rakko, “Big Harvest.”

In modern times, citizens of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation extend these traditions when they participate in the Muscogee Nation Festival, which takes place in Okmulgee following the summer solstice.  The first such event was held in 1975, two hundred years after William Bartram learned the significance of Green Corn while travelling through Mvskoke country.

This year’s thirty-sixth annual Festival was bigger than ever, with a long list of scheduled activities.  Not many Mvskokes grow their own corn these days, but the sacred staple could still be found at certain places:

Roasted ears and other corn-based dishes were available from vendors serving food on the Omniplex midway.

Fresh, locally grown corn was for sale at the farmers market on the west lawn of the Creek Council House.

Traditional games organized by Cvkotakse Seccvlke, the Mvskoke Bow Shooters Society, included a cornstalk shoot west of the Mound Building.

Senior activities at the Okmulgee Elderly Nutrition Center featured a safke contest.

The Senior Citizens Gift Shop, located in the main building of the capitol complex, has a great selection of homemade ingredients for traditional foods including safke corn, hominy, and dried sweet corn.

It is also worth noting that the meal served before the stomp dance on Thursday evening, the official opening of the Festival, did not include dishes made from fresh corn, since some of those participating were from ceremonial grounds where they are still fasting in preparation for posketv.

Industrial civilization has not been kind to corn and other living things.  Mvskoke people bear an age-old responsibility to care for the vital plants that sustained our ancestors, and that will feed us and our descendants if we respect the sources of life.

Muscogee Nation News, July 2010

Sources:

Travels and Other Writings, by William Bartram

Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, by John R. Swanton

Religious Beliefs and Medicinal Practices of the Creek Indians, by John R. Swanton

Mvskoke (Creek) Customs and Traditions

2010 Muscogee (Creek) Nation Festival

Sovereignty Begins at Home

The Okmulgee sky was overcast during the second weekend of February, but the mood inside the Mound Building was considerably more upbeat.  People from near and far had gathered for the Food Sovereignty Symposium, which is quickly becoming one of the more important annual events in Mvskoke country.

The program began on Friday morning with welcoming remarks by Ben Yahola and Vicky Karhu of the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative, organizers of the symposium.  They also introduced this year’s theme:  Porwvn, Hompetvn, Pom Vhesaketv Tos (Our Seeds, Our Food, Our Survival).

All symposium activities were free and open to the public thanks to funding provided by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and both A. D. Ellis and Alfred Berryhill were on hand to welcome participants to the Capitol Complex.

Second Chief Berryhill offered a song and a prayer in the Mvskoke language.

Principal Chief Ellis recounted some childhood memories on the family farm, including a humorous story about unintentional mischief involving jars of produce his mother had canned for the winter.

The first formal presentation, by one of the leading climate experts in the world, reviewed the scientific evidence for global warming and explained how our climate will change in Oklahoma.  This was a sobering reminder that food sovereignty is something everyone will be thinking about in the near future.

The speakers who followed presented various strategies for self-determination in an era of corporate domination.

A renowned food systems analyst detailed the relationship between agricultural production and economic recovery, demonstrating the importance of community-based food networks.

The coordinator of the Oklahoma Farm-to-School Program described how this synergistic venture in local food benefits both growers, who need to make a living, and students, who need to eat better.

The director of Urban Harvest, a program of the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, explained how organic gardening and other neighborly practices can help feed those who might otherwise go hungry.

Two leaders from Dream of Wild Health, a native-owned organic farm in Minnesota, explained their effort to cultivate wellness by growing and preserving more than three hundred varieties of indigenous heirloom seeds.

An ethnobotanist from the Chickasaw Nation discussed their Ecological Resources and Sustainability program and offered an overview of traditional foods in the southeast.

All of these presentations were informative and encouraging, but the most enjoyable experience of the day was hearing about two Mvskoke community food projects.  Barton Williams from the Wilson Indian Community and Bud McCombs from the Eufaula Indian Community related their efforts to establish community gardens, under the guidance of elders and for the sake of future generations.  Williams and McCombs are engaging speakers, and we are fortunate to have such leaders in our midst.

If the highlight of the first day of the symposium involved Mvskoke produce, the highlight of the second day was Mvskoke food.

On Saturday, we enjoyed a noon meal of traditional dishes prepared by Mary Harjo:  meat and hominy, sakkonepke (safke corn and chicken), red beans, homegrown squash and zucchini, boiled cabbage, cvtvhakv (blue corn dumpling), sour cornbread, and safke, with grape dumplings and sweet potato casserole for dessert.

(To borrow the words of a certain redneck comedian:  “You might be a Mvskoke if . . . your mouth is beginning to water.”)

Chumona Deere described each dish during the meal, and in the first afternoon presentation Melissa Harjo-Moffer explained the preparation of Mvskoke foods.  Harjo, Deere, and Harjo-Moffer are gracious hosts, and we are fortunate to have such leaders in our midst.

I’ll write more about the symposium in my next column.  In the meantime, I have posted the agenda for the Food Sovereignty Symposium 2010—including links to the organizations that participated—at the website below.

Muscogee Nation News, March 2010

Sources:

Food Sovereignty Symposium 2010

Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative