Buffalo in Newton County
By Jonnie Miller
During certain seasons the buffalo migrated as far east and south as the Gulf Coastal Plains. Today most of the buffalo are in zoos or on a few ranches throughout Texas. Preservation of the buffalo can be attributed to such people as Charles Goodnight. Before Texas became a republic buffalo hides and deer skins were being sold in Louisiana. In 1776 a shipment of 120 buffalo hides and 3,500 deer skins was recorded and most of these came from the Texian country hunted by Louisiana pioneers.
H.F. Wilson, who operated warehouses in Belgrade and Salem on the Sabine River in Newton County, shipped two cargoes of buffalo hides in 1905. The sternwheeler steamboat Dura carried away five bundles of buffalo hides in 1895 in one haul and 120 dry buffalo hides in another. Wilson also had written on how to cure buffalo meat in a ledger in 1900. His recipe called for 400 pounds of buffalo meat. You have to hang it for two hours to let the blood drip away. After that the meat was marinated in ¼ ounce pulverized red pepper, ½ ounce salt peter, 4 pounds sugar and a gallon of salt. Instructions were to mix together and keep the meat weighted down under the brine.
Wilson filled his ledgers with recipes and historical notes. Some of these pages are in the archives of Stephen F. Austin University. Left behind in his journals were a collection of the popular cures of the day.
There was a recipe for white wash with prickly and lime and one for soda pop with sugar, tartaric acid, frothy egg whites and boiling water. There is also a recipe for corn beer with water and molasses. This recipe was very interesting. "Take a quart of sound corn and boil it until soft. Put it in a two gallon jug and nearly fill it with water. Put in a pint or a pint and a half of molasses and put it in a warm place. In two and a half days or so a good corn beer results. Drink it off. Repeat the process of renewing and drinking until the corn divides into particles. That goes on indefinitely and the end product is know as beer seed."
Jonnie Miller