44 



at that time was to do some vacation work in making anthropologica] 

 measurements of Indians for the benefit of the Chicago World's P'air 

 Exposition. At that time I made some interesting notes on Indian 

 foodstuffs, and among them none were more important than the in- 

 tensely interesting methods developed by these poor, despised, Digger 

 Indians in preparing acorn meal and in making acorn bread. A few 

 years later I had another opportunity to go back to that reservation 

 ,ind make a more extended study of these uses. 



The buckeye, which as you know, is poisonous, is a nut eaten by 

 these Indians. They have learned by long experience how to get the 

 poison out of it. They simply roast the nuts, slice them, ])ut them 

 into a bag and allow them to lie in running water over niglit. The 

 water extracts all of the poisonous saponin and leaves most of the 

 nutriment behind. 



There are a great many species of oak in California. The acorns 

 from all of these species are more or less bitter. They are very bit- 

 ter as compared to the sweet acorns eaten in very large quantity in 

 Ital}'. The Italians do not grind their acorns into a meal, but eat them 

 directly without any preparation at all. Large morsels are swallowed 

 and pass undigested through the body. The Indians of California have, 

 however, followed the method employed everywhere by scientific stock 

 feeders. They have learned to grind these nuts very fine before eating 

 them. They go out when the acorns are ripe with large baskets held 

 on the head, and with hands throw the acorns into the baskets which are 

 thus very quickly filled. One family will often gather 8 to 10 bushels 

 a year. They are dried in the hot sunshine, split in halves and stored 

 in the dry condition for future use. Thus prepared there is no danger 

 whatever of the nuts getting moldy. 



The grinding of these dried acorns into meal, the sifting, the 

 elimination of the bitter principles and the transformation of the 

 meal into mush and bread are all exceedingly interesting processes 

 which must have been slowly evolved during hundreds of years by the 

 older Indian women of the tribes. The methods are very much alike 

 in all the tribes and are picturesquely portrayed in some of the j)ic- 

 tures which I will show you this afternoon. The prominent figure in 

 these pictures is an old Yuki squaw. I went to her tepee to take her 

 picture, but found her apparently almost dead. I handed her a quarter 



