32 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 
hairy beneath. It is not of much value commercially but is 
a valuable and beautiful tree for ornamental planting. The 
straight-grained wood is easily split for shingle-making, 
hence the popular name. 
Habitat: dry flats, poor soil, Pennsylvania to Michigan and 
Nebraska, south to Georgia and Arkansas. 
WHITE-OAK ACORNS AS FOOD 
One of the principal foods of the North American Indians 
was meal made from white-oak acorns. Unlike turkey, squash, 
tobacco, and Indian corn, this food has never become popular 
with the white man and is seldom heard of to-day, though our 
white oaks continue to yield heavy crops and the few remain- 
ing Indians from Wisconsin to Washington still make use 
of them. The process of manufacture varied with the dif- 
ferent tribes and with the species of oak from which the 
acorns were taken. The following dispatch from a Washing- 
ton paper describes the process still in use by the Klickitat 
Indians of the Pacific coast : 
“The Klickitat Indian acorn harvest has begun. 
“The acorns, as gathered, are preserved for future use in 
peculiar storing places called Chuck-ahs. These are large baskets 
of long willow sprouts closely woven, six feet high and three in 
diameter. They are set upon stone and stick platforms several 
feet from the ground. They are well braced and the outsides of 
the baskets are coated with pine boughs laid point downward to 
shed off rain and snow. The pine needles also keep out squirrels 
and woodpeckers. As the baskets are filled, bark roofs are con- 
structed to tightly cover them. When the acorns are desired, a 
hole is made in the bottom of the baskets so that they can roll out. 
“The acorns are bitter and cannot be eaten in their natural 
state. When properly cooked and prepared they are palatable. The 
first hull is cracked and removed when the kernel is pounded or 
ground to fine meal. Soft sand stone mortars once were used for 
grinding, but now modern equipment is in the possession of every 
family. After grinding, the next process is removal of the bitter 
tannin. The Indian chief makes a long, shallow basin in clean 
washed sand in which are laid a few flat, fern-like ends of fir boughs. 
“Small stones, heated white hot, are placed into kettles of water. 
The water so heated is mixed with acorn meal to a consistency of 
porridge. This mixture is emptied into sanded moulds, and as 
the hot water runs out into the sand it carries away the substance 
