IROQUOIS USES OF MAIZE 10 1 



Acorns were boiled in lye and roasted^ much as corn was to re- 

 move the bitterness, and after several washings pounded up in a 

 mortar and mixed with meal or meat and made into soup or 

 pudding. Children even now commonly eat raw acorns but their 

 elders at present seldom use them, for cooking. Their former em- 

 ployment remains only a memory. 



The name hickory in its original uncorrupted form is derived 

 from the name given by the Virginia Indians to a food or flavoring 

 Hquor prepared from a nut meat emulsion. John Smith in 1612 

 described this nut preparation as follows : " Then doe they dry 

 them againe upon a mat over a hurdle. After they put it into a 

 m.orter of wood and beat it very small : that done they mix it with 

 water that the shells may sink to the bottome. This water will be 

 coloured as milk ; which they call Pawcohiccora and keepe it for their 

 use/'^ 



The original Lenape form of the word according to William 

 Gerard^ was patahikareo. 



For cracking nuts cuplike depressions, the size of the nut were 

 picked into small boulders or slabs of shale. The nut was placed in 

 the depression and cracked or crushed with a suitable stone. These 

 " nut stones " and hammers were used on the various reservations 

 up to within a few years and there are many Indians in New York 

 State who can remember having used them. These stones are to 

 be found today near large old nut trees and the writer in his child- 

 hood days often hunted about for them in his grandfather's back 

 fields and used them for the purpose previously mentioned. In the 

 Cattaraugus valley where black walnut trees once were plentiful 

 these nut stones are common. The Seneca call the pitted nut stone 

 dyiodeda'kwe'^. The hammer is called ye"ye"^dakwa' and the entire 

 nut cracking outfit deyondeniya"dakta'. 



The Seneca say that in the early days dry butternut and hickory 

 meats were pulverized and mixed with dried bear or deer meat pul- 



^ " . . . they search for — even acorns, which they value as highly as 

 corn ; after having dried these, they roast them in a kittle with ashes, in 

 order to take away their bitterness. As for me, I eat them dry, and they 

 take the place of bread." Rale. 1716-27. Jesuit Relations. 67:215; cf. also 

 1610, p. 243; Lawson, p. 178. 



2 Smith. Map of Virginia (1612) p. 12. Cf. Strachey. History of Travile 

 into Virginia (1616) ; Norwood. Voyage to Virginia (1649), p. S7 1 Bev- 

 erly. History of Virginia (1705). Bk 2, p. 16. 



3 Am. Anthropologist, New ser. v. 9, no. i, Jan. -Mar. 1907. p. 92 



