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Performing Archive

"Food"

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Hanamh is the Piman name for the cholla cactus and its fruit. The natives gather the fruit of this spiny plant in large quantities, and it forms a food of material importance to the several tribes living within its habitat. In gathering it they use rude tongs made from a split stick. After a basket is filled, the fruit is spread on the ground and bushed about with a small, stiff besom until the spines are worn off, or the spines are burned of in an open fire.
The basketry of the Karok does not differ from that of the Hupa and the Yurok. The process is always twining, and the usual materials are hazel rod for the warp, roots of the digger or the yellow pine for the weft, and Xerophyllum grass for white overlay, bark of the maidenhair fern for black, and fibres from the stem of Woodwardia fern, dyed in alder-bark juice in the mouth of the workwoman, for red. Represented in the plate are the receptacle for the storage of seeds and nuts, the burden-basket, the winnowing tray, various sizes of mush-baskets and food containers, and the cradle-basket.
Wokas, the seeds of the water-lily, Nymphaea polysepala, is harvested in the latter part of August and throughout September. The nearly ripe pods are plucked and deposited in the canoe, but the mature ones, having burst open, are too sticky to be plucked, and are scooped up in a tule ladle and placed in a basket. After the pods have fermented, the seeds are separated from the mass by stirring in water. They are then dried, parched, hulled, dried again, and stored in bags. Wokas was formerly a staple food, and is still much used as a luxury.
The Chipewyan are one of several Athapascan groups occupying the territory between the Hudson bay and the Rocky mountains, from about the fifty-seventh parallel to the Arctic circle. Much of this area is barren, but the streams that feed and drain the innumerable lakes are bordered by thick groves of the slender, white boles of aspens, whose pleasant glades are favored by camps of fishermen and berrypickers. The Chipewyan dwelling, formerly made of the skins of caribou, on which animal these people principally depended for food, clothing, and shelter, was one of the few points in which their culture resembled that of the plains Indians. Their distinctive garment was a leather or fur coat with skirts cut to a point before and behind, a feature to which the appellation Wichipwayaniwuk ("they pointed fur people"), the Cree original of Chipewyan, alluded.
In early days, before white men invaded the Great Plains and ruthlessly slaughtered them by the hundreds of thousands, bison were of prime importance to the hunting tribes of the vast region in which those animals had their range. The bison was not only the chief source of food of the Plains Indians, but its skin was made into clothing, shields, packs, bags, snowshoes, and tent and boat covers; the horns were fashioned into spoons and drinking vessels; the sinew was woven into reatas, belts, personal ornaments, and the covers of sacred bundles; and the dried droppings, "buffalo-chips," were used as fuel. So dependent on the buffalo were these Indians that it became sacred to them, and many were the ceremonies performed for the purpose of promoting the increase of the herds.