148 THE NUT CULTUEIST. 



History.— ^The early white settlers of tlie" Atlantic 

 States found the hickory nut in common use among the 

 Indians, who gathered and stoted them in large quanti- 

 ties in the fall, for food during the winter months, and 

 while our ancestors who sought to make homes in the 

 western wilderness may have appreciated these luxuries, 

 they needed land for cultivation, and to secure it the 

 forests were destroyed, with no thought of preserving 

 trees that would yield food for themselves or succeeding 

 generations. Not only were the forests cleared away, as 

 things to be banished from sight and mind, but as the 

 hickories yielded superior timber for various agricultural 

 and other implements, as well as for fuel, they were 

 often sought for and utilized in advance of the general 

 clearing of wood lands, and the first to feel the wood- 

 man's axe. 



William Bartram, in the account of his travels 

 through the Southern Atlantic States, from 1773 to 

 1778, and published in Philadelphia in 1791, says, in 

 referring to these nuts, that they ai-e held "in great 

 estimation with the present generation of Indians, par- 

 ticularly Juglans exaltata, commonly called shellbarked 

 hickory ; the Creeks store up the latter in their towns. 

 I have seen above an hundred bushels of these nuts be- 

 longing to one family. They pound them to pieces, and 

 then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing 

 through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of 

 the liquid ; this they call by a name which signifies 

 'hickory milk;' it is as sweet and rich as fresh cream, 

 and is an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially 

 in hominy and corn cakes." 



We can readily imagine what a delicious liquid 

 hickory milk must be in which to cook hominy, rice, 

 and similar kinds of grain ; and there would be no dan- 

 ger from tuberculosis in this natural product of the veg- 

 etable kingdom. Perhaps at some future day, when 



