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Understand that the pine nut was to the people of the
Great Basin what the buffalo was to the plains people. The nut is protein
packed with all 20 amino acid and very high in concentration in 8 of the
9 amino acids necessary for growth.
The nut was
a staple in the diet of all the peoples of this region. It was a life-link food with gatherings celebrations, creation
stories and teachings all accompanying the yearly harvest. For in excess
of 10,000 years - that is neither a mistake or an exaggeration- native american
people harvested the pinon. The Washo, the Shoshone, Paiutes, Hopi and their
ancestors ate pinon nuts as a major, storable , multi -faceted food.
Long before Euro-Americans entered the Great Basin,
substantial numbers of people lived within the present boundaries of the
Great Basin. Archaeological reconstruction suggest human habitation stretching
back some 12,000 years. The earliest known inhabitants were members of what
has been termed the Desert Archaic Culture—nomadic hunter-gatherers with
developed basketry, flaked-stem stone tools, and implements of wood and bone.
They inhabited the region between 10,000 BC and AD 400 These peoples moved
in extended family units, hunting small game and gathering the periodically
abundance.
The Great Basin provided small game for the Northwestern
bands, but of even greater importance were the grass seeds and plant roots
which grew in abundance in the valleys and along the hillsides of northern
Utah. There are probably one hundred different species of grass, in the Basin,
that provide harvestable seeds. One could walk through the grass with a
tray and a beating stick, emptying the tray into a burden basket, occasionally.
Seeds could be stored without much treatment; eventually, they could be
ground into flours. By far the most important seed to the Great Basin people
was the pine nut, taken from the single-needle pinyon pine (pinus monophyllia)
or the double-needle pinyon (pinus edulis); though this culture developed
later in the archaic period.
The pine nut is large and an excellent food source.
It is, however, relatively difficult to harvest and requires a substantial
group effort to do so. The pine nut harvest began in the late summer and
lasted into the fall. It was essentially the last big food-gathering opportunity
of the year Before retirement into winter lowland quarters. It occurred at
intermediate elevations in arid upland hills where junipers and pinions tend
to grow. It was a significant social occasion, and most Great Basin people
held these regions to be sacred ground.
Over the last two thousand years, the pine nut sustained
these peoples. The pine nuts required substantial processing and, then, they
could be stored for later use. and utilization of pine nuts required technological
innovations. While nuts can easily be picked from the ground fallen cones
of the pinyon pine (pinus monophyllia), they are rarely good for human consumption
by that time and the crop has been substantially reduced by insects and small
mammals.
The pine nut came to be a useful staple food because
only after the people learned how to harvest the nut prior to the final ripening
stage of the cone. The technology for achieving a pine-nut harvest was messy
and complex, and it was practiced communally. In fact, pine-nut harvest
defined the great social time of the year, being the greatest gathering of
the people in the concentrated areas of sacred lowland pinyon forest. People
went to the forests in the early fall before the cones had fully ripened
and dropped. They began with "first fruit" celebrations that confirmed the
sacred significance of the food and established their respect for the forests.
When harvest began, the men pulled cones from the trees
using tools made from large willow branches equipped with a sturdy V-shaped
hook at the end. Women and children piled the cones in burden baskets (usually
large conical wicker baskets carried on one’s back with a cordage band across
the forehead). At this point, the cones were just at the point of opening
and were usually full of pine pitch.
In camps surrounding the forest harvesting grounds,
the pine cones were processed. This began by roasting the pine cones around
hot coals, turning them often, to cause them to open up. Then, the cones
could be beaten lightly to cause the nuts to fall out. When a supply of nuts
was available, these required further processing since the nuts were covered
by a soft brown shell. Cracking this shell would be difficult and would
injure the fruit inside The nuts were processed by placing them on a basketry
tray with hot coals from the fire. Once introduced together, the whole mass
was kept in constant motion, throwing them up and swirling the tray, until
the shells were roasted to a hard, crisp dark brown. The coals were removed
at this point and the nuts were poured onto a grinding stone where they
were lightly pounded with a mano until all of the shells had cracked and
falled free of the inner fruit.
Cracked pinenuts are yellow-orange, translucent and
soft. They can be eaten at this point and are delicious. Far more pine nuts
were harvested than could be eaten raw so they needed to be processed further.
At this point, the nuts were returned to a winnowing tray and thrown repeatedly
into the air to allow the cracked shells to be carried off by the wind. When
the shells were all gone, hot coals were returned to the tray and the roasting
process was repeated until the nuts were dry and hard, somewhat darker in
color.
At this point, the nuts could be stored in large
basketry storage containers for later use. Dried nuts could still be eaten
without further processing but the usual procedure was to make a pine-nut
flour by grinding them. They were returned to the grinding stone and the mano was used to pound them lightly until they were well fragmented. Grinding
was achieved with small amounts quickly so that the fine flour could be pushed
off the metate forward into a bowl or onto a tray. A soap-root brush light
be used to move the pine-nut flour on the tray. When enough flour was available,
it could be warmed in water to make a thick paste; then the paste could
be reduced, by dilution, to make whatever consistency was desired. While
pine-nut mush may not sound especially appealing, addition of berries, various
leafy vegetables, and/or ground meat or fish made it a feast.
Tah-Gum, The Washoe Pine-Nut Harvest video is $19.95 per copy plus $5.00 shipping for one copy and 50 cents shipping for each additional copy. You may order with a credit card by phone (775) 784-6932 or FAX (775) 784-1365 or mail a check made out to "Board of Regents". Mail to Oral History Program, Mail Stop 324, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada 89557
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History
of Pine Nuts & The People of the Great Basin