Nuts and Berries

Women and children gather nuts and berries to make a variety of interesting dishes.

       Nuts and berries were found in large quantities in the northern and eastern woodlands of the United States. Such foods were gathered whenever they were available, and they were very highly thought of by the native people.

       In the early days there were great numbers of hickory, black walnut, beech, chestnut, and oak trees in this region and natives made good use of every kind of nut. The nuts were collected by the women and the children after the first frost. The frost loosened the nuts so that they fell to the ground, where they could be gathered easily.

       The Iroquois of the eastern woodlands added the ground meats of hickory nuts, black walnuts, and chestnuts to corn meal. The mixture was then baked to make a heavy but nourishing bread. The women made a kind of cream or butter by crushing hickory nuts and boiling both the meats and the shells. The oily milk that appeared during the boiling was their cream. Sometimes crushed nutmeats were added to corn soup to make it richer.

       Oil obtained from nuts was widely used by natives. Black walnuts, hickory nuts, and other nuts were boiled in water very slowly and the oil that rose to the surface was carefully skimmed off and stored away for future use. Sometimes instead of storing the oil the native women boiled it again to make gravy that they ate with bread, pumpkins, potatoes, squashes, and other foods. The boiled nutmeats were mixed with mashed potatoes. Oil was also obtained from seeds of the sunflowers that were often grown in near by gardens.

       The beech tree was very common in the eastern woodlands. The Forest Potawatomi Indians collected beechnuts in an interesting way. Beechnuts are the favorite food of the deer mouse. This little creature stores up great quantities of beechnuts for winter eating. It hides the nuts, all carefully shelled, in hollow logs or dead trees. After the first winter snows indigenous people had little trouble finding the storehouses, each of which contained four to eight quarts of shelled nuts.

       Native Americans used many kinds of acorns. All acorns contain a substance called tannin, which makes them bitter. Some acorns have more tannin than others. Most tribal people knew that by boiling the acorns in water to which wood ashes had been added the bitter tannin would be removed. After they were boiled, the acorns were dried in the sun and then pounded into meal or flour. Acorn meal was added to soups or made into a mush that was very much like corn-meal mush. The sweetest acorns came from the white oak and the chestnut oak. These were the acorns that natives used most, but when it was necessary they used even the bitterer acorns of the red oak and the black oak. After the acorns fell to the ground with the first frost, they were gathered by the women and children.

       The forest also offered a wealth of berries, which natives ate either raw or cooked. Berries to be stored were placed on flat baskets or on boards and dried in the sun or by the fire. Sometimes the berries were mashed and shaped into little cakes that were dried in the same way and stored in elm bark boxes. Later the dried cakes were soaked in water and made into sauce or mixed with corn meal to make a nourishing bread. The Indians liked many kinds of berries, such as wild black currants, blueberries, Juneberries, elderberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Wild strawberries were, however, the great favorite of all the woodland tribes. Svoboda

Read more about the gifts from Native Americans:

• Gifts From The Native Americans  
• Cultivated Plants 
• Wild Plants
• Beverages
• Maple Sugar
• Seasoning
• Bark and Bast
• Medicine
• Gourds and Pumpkins and Their Uses

Learn more about Native American foods:

• Food Nuts of the Eastern Woodlands Native Peoples
• Traditional Recipes from The Navaho (PDF)
• Boiled Corn Bread from The Iroquois