While detailed oral histories of First Nations use of indigenous herbs, plants and trees for treatment and cusine are pervasive, very exiguous information of North American aboriginal uses of mushrooms is available. The reasons for this seem self-explanatory.
First, most mushrooms and fungi have exiguous taste, sparse nutritional value and exiguous availability due to their short seasons. Because they did not contribute remedy for ailment, their rarity did not contribute a stimulus to hunt them out as remedial aids. In fact, because such a wide variety of fungi and mushrooms are poisonous, they were more likely to be avoided than sought after.
Second, most mushrooms, including morels, need to be cooked to be palatable. Bordering on bland, even bitter, raw mushrooms would not have been desirable for most natives. In fact, many of the mushrooms have a mild adverse reaction when raw, and can only be eaten when cooked. While hunting or while in transit, First Nations people adored "fast food" on the fly.
Third, most morels and other mushrooms do not handle well in transit. They crush easily, bleed into a soupy mess, or dissolve into nothing in hours in the heat.
Nonetheless, many of the woodland and upland tribes of North America have some history of using early spring crops of morels, hens of the woods, and other quick-blooming mushrooms as a supplement to their meals. For example, northern Cree, Sioux, Ojibwa and Iroquois tribes used morels by drying and powdering them to carry with them. There are documented cases of use of definite mushrooms in rituals and sweat lodge events (probably to trigger out-of-body types of imaginings and hallucinations).
The first wide use of morels in Canada occurred as settlers moved west, with the courier du bois of the Hudson Bay enterprise and the early Scottish, land later Ukrainian settlers of northern Ontario and Manitoba using morels and other mushrooms as they had in Europe. In the Usa, the history of morel harvesting and other mushroom hunting extends back to early Virginia settler days, but is more generally found in American history with the westward settlements from the north-eastern states.
Although the natives of Canada's western regions and border states of Montana, Dakotas and Minnesota have a compassionate history of aiding white settlers with disease and winter survival strategies, this cooperation is not documented in a passing of facts on harvests of morels and mushrooms until the late 1800s and early 20th century. In fact, many of the uses to which morels are currently put by First Nations people come from white influence!
Native Americans were adept at using approximately any element of their surroundings to sustain in survival. No doubt, use of morels in meals occurred, but the documentation of this convention is limited.
