Eating Ethnicity: Examining 18th Century French Colonial Identity Through Selective Consumption of Animal Resources in the North American Interior

Cultural identities can be created and maintained through daily practice and food consumption is one such practice. People need food in order to survive, but the types of food they eat are largely determined by the interaction of culture and their environment. By approaching the topic of subsistence practices as being culturally constituted, the study of foodways provides an avenue to examine issues of cultural identity through selective consumption. Eating certain foods to the exclusion of others is one method for establishing social distance between peoples and is simultaneously a reflection of this relationship and the types of interactions that take place between groups. This study explores the issue of cultural identity as expressed through selective consumption of animal resources. The outpost known as Fort St. Joseph will serve as an example of how one can utilize animal exploitation patterns to determine selective consumption and these results are compared to animal exploitation pattems at Fort Ouiatenon, French Cahokia, Fort de Chartres I, and Fort de Chartres III. Variation in these patterns suggests the different ways in which cultural identities were expressed at each site.