The following piece, updated here, was published as “The Best I Ever Had: Indian Tacos” on “Old Ones Dream” March 19, 2013, and as a piece in “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” published April 14, 2022.
In June 2010, on our Crazy Horse Tour, Tanne and our Aussie Graycy camped on the Buffalo River in northern Missouri for several nights. Then we drove up through the Flint Hills, turned west up the North Platte to Scotts Bluff and Fort Robinson, and up through the Black Hills, spending time with many of the points of interest along the way.
We arrived in Spearfish, South Dakota where nephew Deaver and wife Margee were on faculty at Black Hills State University. After a tour of the small college town, Deaver took us for a drive up through Spearfish Canyon in a cool drizzle, and we stopped in at Cheyenne Crossing for brunch. While waiting in line to be seated, we visited with a young man who had gotten off of a bicycle and out of a slicker as we were driving up. He said he was riding west across the country from Pennsylvania to Washington to be in a friend’s wedding. He wrote in his journal, and on postcards, while waiting to be served.
Deaver recommended the Indian Tacos, and it was good advice. The filling was traditional taco beef, beans, lettuce, etc., but served on Frybread instead of tortillas. Frybread entered the Native American diet when the U. S. Government first provided flour, sugar, lard and salt to the captive confined peoples. Sounds pretty toothsome, doesn't it? It is, and it became a food tradition in modern Native American culture, contributing more than its fair share to epidemic diabetes among the “reserved” peoples. Read the works of Sherman Alexie to see the part that Frybread plays in modern life on the "Rez." Read Sherman Alexie anyway, in spite of his fallen status.
It was the only Indian Taco I ever had. The only thing that keeps it from being the best Taco of any kind that I ever had is Clara's on the street in San Miguel de Allende, GTO, Mexico.
A couple of weeks later we were traveling from Glacier National Park to Calgary and stopped for lunch in Cardston, Alberta. I went into a Royal Bank of Canada branch to use the ATM for lunch money and found that the bank was serving lunch as part of a celebration honoring indigenous peoples—the Kainai Nation (Blackfoot) reservation is nearby. We were invited in and joined several Blackfoot for lunch prepared, as we watched, by bank staff. Lunch consisted of a tasty meatball stew and Frybread. Although one of our indigenous table-mates was critical of the Frybread (not fluffy enough), I was confirmed in my opinion that it makes a great delivery system—in this case for local butter and honey—not something you would want to eat on a daily basis, but real good bread.