Hidatsa cache pit
A Hidatsa underground storage chamber described by Buffalo Bird Woman in a first-person account published in 1917: a narrow-necked, jug-shaped pit lined with dry willow and grass, used to protect stored crops and other provisions.
Built structures · Pits and cavities
Camas earth oven
A temporary, in-place earthen oven used to cook camas with heat retained by fire-heated stones. The dimensions described here belong to one Kalispel-supervised reconstruction, not a universal form.
A fixed oven, not a portable vessel
An earth oven is made where it is used: a prepared hollow in the ground holds a fire-heated stone element and food, then earth or other insulating material helps retain heat. Accounts show ovens ranging from shallow basins to deeper pits, with dimensions, stones, fuel and packing shaped by the food and intended cooking time. Archaeological deposits of fire-cracked rock alone cannot identify the food cooked there. This record concerns a camas earth oven; it does not claim that every earth oven shares one construction.
Camas cooking in the Plateau
Camas bulbs have been an important food for Nez Perce people since time immemorial. At Weippe Prairie in September 1805, Nez Perce people were harvesting and processing camas when Lewis and Clark arrived. The National Park Service describes small earthen kilns used to cook the bulbs before making bread and other meals. This historical attestation is separate from the much later experimental reconstruction described by archaeologist Alston Thoms, supervised by Kalispel elder Alice O’Conner. The experiment is one documented example, not a template for every community or period.
One reported reconstruction
In the mid-1980s experiment, the oven was about 1.75 metres across. It cooked about 20 kilograms of camas with several kilograms of edible black moss for roughly 40 hours. The heating element contained about 300 kilograms of cook stones fired with almost as much lodgepole pine. Ferns and skunk-cabbage leaves packed the food parcels above the heated stones; green plant material and ponderosa-pine bark formed upper insulating layers. Those quantities and layers belong to this specific reconstruction. They are not specifications for a traditional oven or instructions to reproduce a process without local knowledge and expertise.
Heat, limits and interpretation
Long cooking transforms inulin-rich camas into a sweet, usable food through heat; this is not fermentation. Temperatures measured at a fire or heating element do not establish the temperature reached throughout the food. Earth ovens vary in depth and arrangement, and fire-cracked-rock deposits do not by themselves identify the cooked plant or dish. This page records what its sources establish and leaves local geometry and broader community protocols unspecified.
History
The earliest dated attestation in these sources is the 1805 account; Thoms separately describes a modern experimental reconstruction.
Site
GroundA prepared hollow in the ground; exact depth and shape are not standardized in the available sources.
ClimateNot specified by these sources.
A build is made where it stands: moving it means building it again.
How it is built
Materials
- Camas bulbs — Cooked in the oven
- Edible black moss (Alectoria fremontii) — Included in the reported experimental batch only
- Cook stones and lodgepole pine — Heating element and fuel in the reported experiment
- Ferns, skunk-cabbage leaves, green plant material and ponderosa-pine bark — Packing and insulation in the reported experiment
- Prepare an earthen oven in the locally documented form; sources describe variation rather than one universal pit geometry.
- Heat stones in place with wood. In the reported experiment, food packages sat above the heated stones with plant packing and upper insulation.
- Cook using retained heat. The reported experiment lasted about 40 hours; that figure is not a general instruction or a safety-validated recipe.
Places
Weippe Prairie
Historical attestation · Locality evidenceThe NPS records camas processing and earthen kilns here; this does not identify the precise oven geometry.
Columbia Plateau
Traditional preparation · Region evidenceThe research concerns hot-rock cooking practices in western North America and a Kalispel-supervised camas reconstruction; it does not establish a single regional design.
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Sources
Journal of Anthropological ArchaeologyHistory · Method · Archaeology
The fire stones carry: Ethnographic records and archaeological expectations for hot-rock cookery in western North Americamid-1980s camas and black moss experiment supervised by Alice O’Conner
dimensions, quantities, fuel, packing, insulation and duration in that experiment
variable earth-oven forms and cautions interpreting archaeological remains
heating-element temperatures do not establish food temperature
Cited in: A fixed oven, not a portable vessel; Camas cooking in the Plateau; One reported reconstruction; Heat, limits and interpretation
National Park Service, Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail and Nez Perce National Historical ParkHistory · Geography
Camascamas as a longstanding Nez Perce food
camas processing at Weippe Prairie in September 1805
small earthen kilns, cooked bulbs and food uses
continued Nez Perce cultivation and harvest in region
Cited in: A fixed oven, not a portable vessel; Camas cooking in the Plateau; Heat, limits and interpretation