Page 31 - Fall2012

Early written descriptions of California enous stewardship techniques used to enhance
tribes give testimony to the robust health of these these food sources, looks at how the quality of
indigenous peoples. Journalists, anthropologists these foods is connected to the ways in which
and non-Indian settlers noted their “sweet breath the California Indians cared for their land, and
and beautiful white teeth.” The late Norma Turn- introduces the underlying participatory cultural
er Behill, a Mono/Dumna woman from Auberry, kincentric model that gives these lifeways endur-
California, said, "Some of the old people lived to ance and strength.
well over one hundred—that was because of their
diet.” The late Grace Tex, a North Fork Mono LIVING ON THE LAND:
woman born in 1909, who continued to prepare THE INDIGENOUS DIET
and eat traditional acorn mush throughout her C. Hart Merriam, a biologist who spent much
life, in her late nineties described herself as time among the tribes of California between
having “no pains” in contrast to so many other 1900 and 1937, commented on “their superior
elderly people. knowledge of the food, textile and medicinal
The good health of California's first peoples values of animals and plants” in their landscapes.
can be attributed not only to the great variety of A trained taxonomist, he recounts an experience
foods eaten but also to the quality of those foods, he had speaking to a Miwok woman, asking
which in turn was based on the good health of her for the whereabouts of two local species of
the ecosystem in which they lived. Early white manzanita (Arctostaphylos), a plant genus dif-
settlers recognized the amazing abundance of ficult to identify at the species level, only to be
foods they found in California, describing it as informed that there was a third local species, as
“an overflowing store,” but generally did not her daughter fetched samples of all three. At the
recognize it as linked in any way to the Indian time of European contact, over a thousand spe-
presence and participation in the landscape. cies of plants were actively utilized in California,
But the consistent experience and testimonies with each tribe incorporating over two hundred
of California's first peoples, as well as the work different species of plants, animals and fungi into
of investigators and scholars, confirms that the its food repertoire, making up regional cuisines
variety and quality of these foods poured forth unique to each cultural group. Indian names for
from a land that was productive and ecologically plants commonly recognized their morphological
healthy in response to the deliberate steward- characteristics, habitat or use.
ship of generations of California Indians over It was commonplace for adults and children,
millennia. California's native peoples enhanced as they went about their daily lives or walked
and intensified their food resources with a highly along a trail, to pick knowledgeably handfuls of
developed suite of culturally supported land leaves or berries to eat, nibbling on a diversity of
stewardship practices, engendering the bountiful wild foods, participating in the landscape. Native California's
California landscape that so impressed the early people would travel, often for the explicit purpose native peoples
European explorers and settlers. of getting something particular to eat—experi-
Today California Indians still care for the encing the first appearance of a favored green, the enhanced and
land, harvest and process many California plants gathering of geese or great flights of pigeons, the intensified their
in traditional ways, and hunt, fish and gather maturing of grains on native grasses or the fall food sources
seaweeds, but their opportunity to align them- run of fish. Thomas Jefferson Mayfield, growing
selves with their traditional native foodways is up under the care of the Choinumne Indians in with a highly
not what it was before their relationship with their the San Joaquin Valley in the 1850s, recalled with developed
life-giving land was interrupted by European great pleasure the annual expedition many in his suite of
settlement and the centuries of Euro-American tribe made traveling downriver in fifty-foot long
aggression against them. And yet Indian people rafts constructed of tules bound with willow to culturally

and their lifeways continue to endure, offering Tulare Lake to participate in the abundant hunt- supported land
wisdom and competence to a world in need of ing and fishing along the shores where the Tache stewardship
direction. This article explores the variety of tribe lived.
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foods eaten in native California, describes indig- practices.
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