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| Picture credit: California Horticultural Society |
The Native Californians ate seeds. That is something I learned early on in my explorations of their food habits. I saw a number of references to it in the first books I reviewed and almost didn't put much focus on it because of the way their preparation was described: "ground and cooked into a mush". That didn't seem like a big deal; after all, the same was said about acorns but acorns are given a lot of emphasis in the literature. The impression I got was this was common but not an important or even large part of their diet.
That impression was wrong.
My first error was assuming that seeds were hard to collect or that, if it was easy, no one gathered them in any great quantity. My second error was believing the mush was made just from the seeds of a particular plant and that the food was bland or dull. Then I came across this document:
From the introduction (page 1):
California and Oregon Indians relished the taste of many kinds of small seeds and grains, gathered from the inflorescences of wildflowers and grasses. Packed with fiber and protein and loaded with flavor, these served as breakfast cereal, seasoning, snack, hearty porridge, and sustained Indian runners on long journeys. ...
These wild seeds were gathered from every kind of environment: chia from the Mojave Desert, annual semaphoregrass (Pleuropogon) grains from moist pockets in fog-dripped coastal redwoods, pond-lily (Nuphar) seeds from crystal clear freshwater marshes, and biscuitroot (Lomatium) fruits in chaparral openings. Today, western wildflowers offer visual sustenance to the hiker and subject matter for the artist, but in former times these plants were the Indian’s bread and butter. By knowing the edible qualities of the flora of one’s regional territory, California and Oregon Indians exemplified what it was like to truly live in a place-based culture where the local and regional flora becomes part of one’s physical, mental, and spiritual make-up. ...
The California and Oregon grasslands were the most productive breadbasket regions. Millions of pounds of seeds were gathered from the grasslands and vernal pools of the Central Valley; grasslands on serpentine outcrops throughout California and Oregon; the prairies of northern and southern California and Oregon coasts; the meadows of the various mountain ranges; and the cold and warm desert grasslands of the California’s interior...
"Millions of pounds of seeds" tells me this was not a sometimes food item. The paper goes on to explain how the California landscape differed from before contact to after. For example, originally the fields "were configured with perennial bunchgrasses and a few annual grasses, interspersed with annual and perennial wildflowers". Then, with the arrival of Europeans, changes occurred (page 9):
... with the grazing of livestock, exotic grasses and wildflowers were brought into California both deliberately, through direct seeding for livestock feed, and unintentionally, through seeds carried in hay bales, folds of textiles, hooves of livestock, and a thousand other means (Gerlach 1998; Bossard et al. 2000). Many of these plants came from parts of Europe with a Mediterranean climate, very similar to the climate of California. Thus, they took hold and spread rapidly, growing in association with and also overtaking the native plants.
This would change what and how much was available. "When certain nonnative plants replaced many of the native plants, Indians shifted their diets to embrace these new plants." (page 10)
Before and after contact, the seed-bearing plants the Native Californians recognized as important were tended and encouraged (page 4):
In many places where wild seeds were gathered, landscapes were tended. Plants were beaten with a seed beater, knocking the seeds into a wide-mouthed basket. In the act of seed beating, native women deliberately scattered seeds into the surrounding areas, acting as seed dispersers (fig. 3). Seeds were also sown, sometimes into burned areas and scratched in with a brush harrow (Anderson 2005a). According to Elizabeth Renfro (1992), the Shasta in northwestern California broadcast seeds, and many Shasta bands practiced controlled burning of areas to clear out undergrowth and encourage the growth of particular plants. While California Indians did not fully domesticate food crops, the saving and sowing of seeds likely caused some genetic changes in the native plants (Anderson and Wohlgemuth 2012).
My hope is to acquire different seeds and cook them in a variety of ways that might mimic what the Native Americans did. I know I can acquire chia seeds in quantity. I am not certain at all about other seeds, but that won't stop me from looking. I need to explore what was available more thoroughly.
