206 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



wheat has been harvested, usually this is in April. Strong winds begin 

 at that time ; early falling of nuts depends upon the wind. May, too, 

 is a good month, but after May, snows come, and one cannot find the 

 nuts ; if not all have been collected because of early snows, they can be 

 gotten in October when the snow melts. Chileans eat the araucaria nut 

 uncooked ; very few Mapuche do. Mapuche remove the hulls by 

 roasting the nuts in hot ashes and coals — this causes them to pop out 

 of their hulls — or we boil them in water, after which the hulls are 

 easily removed by hand. If the harvest is large, we roast them and 

 string them and hang them up in the ruka. Later they are boiled and 

 eaten. They are not mixed with anything. They are a rich food, and 

 one cannot eat many at one time. A nut is about so long" (indicating 

 the distance from tip to first knuckle of little finger). 



Wild honey is collected from trees and used in sweetening foods, 

 but every household today supplements it with sugar bought in 

 Chilean stores. Quoting a 19-year-old Coharipe girl : "My father gets 

 wild honey today like the Mapuche have always gotten it, he told me. 

 On a windy day, he walks among the trees on the mountainsides and 

 looks for a tree around the top of which bees are buzzing. A few 

 steps away from the foot of this tree, in the windward direction, he 

 builds a fire. The wind will take the smoke toward the tree then. Bees 

 cannot tolerate smoke, and so they either fly away, or die. When there 

 are no longer any bees about the tree, he fells it, splits it in halves, 

 lengthwise, removes the honey and brings it home." The girl's mother 

 then told that at home the honey is put into cantaros and is set close 

 to the fire to be thoroughly heated, after which it is set to cool. The 

 wax which collects at the top while it is cooling is removed. If foreign 

 substances, such as leaves and twigs, are seen in the honey — "maybe 

 the man had a difficult time getting the honey, for bees can be mean" — 

 the honey freed of its wax is again thoroughly heated and then 

 strained through a suspended chaiwe from which the honey drips 

 into a container placed below it. 



Of cultivated plants wheat is the essential one ; it is a basic food in 

 the Araucanian diet. Four traditional dishes are prepared from it: 

 tortillas (chapakoshke), mote (kako kachillo), catuto (maltrun or 

 mal'a), and toasted wheat (kopanaiiwa). 



Tortillas are made of flour mixed with water, eggs, and salt. A 

 handful of dough is flattened to desired thickness by being tossed from 

 hand to hand and is then baked directly on or in hot ashes at the 

 fireside. 



Mote is a favorite dish. "It is exclusively a Mapuche dish," said 

 a woman ; "every mother sees to it that all her daughters learn how to 



