Pottery, Steam Cooking, and Stone Lamps

(14) Nor does the absence of pottery vessels account for the method of steam cooking, although this is a feature of both the regions that employ it, Polynesia and the British Columbian coast. The Ainos still, even when they have iron, make cooking-pots of cherry-tree bark, which boil their meat well and last many times hung over a slow fire. And the natives of the North-west American coast use wooden vessels and even wicker baskets to boil their food in by means of hot stones placed in the water. So the Maoris got the oil out of the titoki berries by putting them bruised into a wooden pot with water and hot stones. And the method of roasting and broiling food at an open fire was no uncommon thing with them. But the introduction of the European iron pot has in both regions, as amongst the Ainos, driven out the more primitive methods of cooking, which retained in the meat the juices and the best sustaining elements, instead of bleaching them out. The natural indolence of man prefers the method that economises time and trouble to that which saves the digestion and at the same time the essence and flavour of the food.

(15) Nor is there any essential connection between steam cooking and the boiling of water by throwing hot stones into a vessel or into a hollow in the rock. Else the Esquimaux and almost all Arctic peoples would not only use the latter as they do, but the former. The vapour or steam bath produced page 55by placing hot stones in water is universal around the Arctic circle, as it is amongst the British Columbians and the Maoris. But steam cooking is confined to the two latter, whilst cooking over a lamp is the Esquimaux and Aleutian method. Without the stone lamp the Arctic peoples would never have been able to subsist or spread. It is found amongst the natives of the North-west coast of America and amongst the Maoris; but its use is confined to lighting purposes, the readiness with which they can procure firewood and get to the earth even in winter making other methods of cooking easy. Besides the stone lamp and a number of traits and habits that belong to many primitive peoples, the Maoris have in common with the Esquimaux salutation by the rubbing of noses.