Sundry aspects of the diets of the indigenous people of California

@tonyrebelo @jeremygilmore @ludwig_muller @botaneek @troos @lysandra @graysquirrel @grnleaf

I have before me some information on the diet of the indigenous people in California. My source is chapter 4 in The Natural World of the California Indians (1980), by R F Heizer and A B Elsasser (https://biblio.com.au/book/natural-world-california-indians-volume-46/d/1476235444?aid=frg&gclid=CjwKCAjwiJqWBhBdEiwAtESPaNt3nQVec9HrOB1u7YPONj_3ybQrE4nBtXE96RHrumMTynZFdI_G-xoC4IIQAvD_BwE and https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Natural_World_of_the_California_Indi.html?id=jpvrxVA0PGYC&redir_esc=y).
 
My search image was particularly for several aspects of diet, including

• fatty foods,
• seeds of grasses and other herbaceous plants, and
• salt and natural supplements of iodine.

The aboriginal population of California was, as under similar climates at similar latitudes in Australia (https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/fredfery/viz/MapofIndigenousAustralia/MapofIndigenousAustralia), remarkably diversified in tribal terms. The people were far from homogeneous: about 60 tribes, each with its own language, inhabited what is now the state of California (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California).
 
However, two interesting generalisations emerge.

The first is that all indigenous Californians, other than those inhabiting the banks of the Colorado River (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River) in the extreme southeast, refrained from farming, remaining instead at the hunter-gatherer stage. The men normally went naked and barefoot, although they did use furs in winter.

The second is that the population was relatively dense by North American standards. The people, who generally settled on river banks, often inhabited villages. Some sizeable towns (of about 1000 individuals) were recorded. This combination of ‘civilised’ life (in the sense of a tendency to settle) and retention of a pre-farming economy strikes me as noteworthy.

An important fact is that no population indigenous to California used any form of metal at the time of European arrival. This is true despite the fact that the populations on the coast made such good boats that they could fish for tuna (https://swfsc-publications.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/TM/SWFSC/NOAA-TM-NMFS-SWFSC-624.pdf).
 
This raises a puzzle:
Since California was obviously a rich enough habitat to produce much food for humans, why did the indigenous people not bother to farm?

The lack of farming is easy to understand in Australia, where the aboriginals lived in sparse populations, and the soils were poor.

However, the situation in California is somewhat paradoxical: the people had been exposed to horticultural technology for thousands of years, yet continued to rely on hunting and gathering. The indigenous Californians seem to have exceeded most other North American aboriginals in population density; yet they did not adopt the farming practices which were so well-developed elsewhere in North America before European arrival.
 
All aboriginal populations in California relied to a large degree on animal matter. In many parts of that state there were rich pickings owing to e.g. the salmon runs in the rivers (https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Fishes/Chinook-Salmon). The coasts are far richer than in e.g. Australia, owing to upwellings of nutrients (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Locations-of-significant-coastal-upwelling-regions-in-the-world-ocean_fig11_307434835 and https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=2ce07b44d30e40d8bef059d2be8546b7 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upwelling and https://www.clivar.org/research-foci/upwelling and https://deadzonesjw.weebly.com/coastal-upwelling.html), and the productivity of kelp beds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelp_forest).

However, I will not go into the details, other than to mention that it is safe to assume that the people derived much healthy fat from various forms of animal matter such as oily fish. I doubt that there was ever a vegetarian culture among indigenous Californians.
 
One of the mainstays of diet in California generally was acorns, belonging to the genera Quercus (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=47851&view=species) and Notholithocarpus (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/69823-Notholithocarpus-densiflorus).

Oaks, both evergreen and deciduous, are widely abundant in California. They produce large crops of acorns, albeit with fluctuations from year to year. Acorns were collected in quantity during the limited season, then stored in granaries for winter.

Acorns are starchy and substantial, and easily collected. The problem is that they are defended by tannins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannin), which taste extremely astringent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astringent_(taste)).

So, the Californian aboriginals always had to process the acorns in one way or another, to get them to the point of tasting acceptable (which would probably still be unpalatable by modern standards).

It is clear that most or all tribes of indigenous Californians had much starch in their diet. However, by modern standards this starch was so unappetising that it is hard to imagine anyone overeating the mush for pleasure.
 
Analyses on page 96 of this book show that acorns, although not regarded as fatty food, contained considerable amounts of fat. For comparison, groundnut seeds contain 27.5% lipids and pine seeds contain 35% lipids, while maize contains only <2% lipids. The values for acorns were 4-13.5% in the case of Quercus and 8.5% in the case of Notholithocarpus. So acorns contain concentrations of fats at least fivefold those of most grains and starchy beans.
 
The aboriginal Californians did harvest small seeds, of both grasses and dicotyledonous herbaceous plants. I am not suggesting that they ate considerable quantities of ‘vegetable oil’. However, on the other hand it would be incorrect to claim that small seeds were an insignificant part of their diet.

Genera from which grass seeds were harvested include Oryzopsis (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=129484&view=species). Dicotyledonous genera from which small seeds were harvested include Chenopodium (same genus as quinoa, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa) and Salvia (same genus as chia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chia_seed).
 
It is noteworthy that the aboriginal Californians paid much attention to salt. I suspect that this was partly owing to iodine associated with the saline sources.

I quote as follows from https://books.google.com.au/books?id=jpvrxVA0PGYC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=heizer+elsasser+a+few+tribes+boiled+salt+water+to+extract+the+salt&source=bl&ots=zYkIus1z7j&sig=8V_F38X0ia6vq5Gd8RI_TWN8ZhM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIy-HezOrNAhUGsJQKHeS5DZUQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=heizer%20elsasser%20a%20few%20tribes%20boiled%20salt%20water%20to%20extract%20the%20salt&f=false:
"In the interior, north of Tehachapi, Salt grass (Distichlis spicata https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/58372-Distichlis-spicata) was roasted or burned in a pit over wood coals. The melted salt dropped to the bottom of the pit and was collected there as a cake. Along the coast a purple seaweed (Porphyra perforata https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/133213-Porphyra-perforata) was gathered, pressed tightly into cakes, dried, and nibbled at during meals. (Porphyra is the genus so widely cultivated by modern Japanese and used as nori.) A few tribes boiled salt water to extract the salt. At least one group put sticks of rotten punky wood into a salt spring; when these were well soaked they were removed and burned to 'melt' out the salt into a cake. The Tolowa of coastal Northwestern California used seawater to salt their food. Salt was also gathered from deposits near salt springs or seepages. Sometimes the Indians then dissolved it in water and decanted and evaporated it in order to purify the salt product. Rock salt deposits occur in the Owens Valley, along the Colorado River near Overton, and in some places in the territory of the Western Mono near Sequoia National Park. From these and several other well-known places where it appeared either as rock salt or as heavy crustal depositions from springs, salt was used as an item of trade with surrounding interior peoples".
 
In summary, one could not really cite indigenous Californians in support of a notion that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had no grain and no seeds of herbaceous dicots in their diets. They did indeed eat such foods as part of their omnivory. It is noteworthy that the aboriginal Californians ate some ‘grain’ and some ‘birdseed’, despite the plants being wild, not cultivated.
 
Tribal distributions for aboriginal Californians:
http://gorhistory.com/hist383/OriginalCalifornians.html and https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Maps-of-California-depicting-the-Indian-tribal-territories-large-map-on-the-left-and_fig1_339815338 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_California#/media/File:California_tribes_&_languages_at_contact.png

Posted on 07 de julho de 2022, 11:03 PM by milewski