M O UN TAIN TREES 



on the way up the mountains. The re- 

 mains of the old blackened caves, near 

 some lone spring where the camps were 

 made at the end of the day's journey are 

 yet found, and the mortars where the 

 daily portions of acorn meal were 

 ground are still waiting to be used as 

 of old. 



Once the nutting grounds were 

 reached, the cones were beaten from the 

 trees with long poles, gathered in piles, 

 and light brush fires built over them. 

 The heat caused the scales of the cones 

 to gape open, thus allowing the fat, 

 brown, speckled nuts to be plucked from 

 their pockets. Sometimes the cones 

 were beaten from the trees in midsum- 

 mer while yet green, roasted, and then 

 split open with a hatchet and the nuts 

 extracted. In either case the nuts were 

 generally roasted before being eaten, a 

 process which added much to their 

 flavor. According to Dr. Barrows, the 

 Cahuilla Indians of the Colorado Desert 

 called the Pinyons te-wat-em, the cones 

 10 



