CV’s First Inhabitants – What Did They Eat?

Let’s imagine ourselves in the pre-European Crescenta Valley, walking up the dusty trail (today’s Honolulu Avenue) that ran between the villages strung along the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. We’re walking on the edge of a large oak forest (that is today Crescenta Valley Park) as we travel to the village of Wiqangna. We pass a large group of villagers collecting acorns, as it’s late summer and the acorns are ripe. The men are up in the trees, shaking the nuts loose, while children scamper on the ground below collecting them. The women gather them into large baskets to carry home.

We pass a teenage boy who wings a curved hunting stick at a rabbit. He hits it and skins it with his obsidian knife. Nearby an old woman bends over the chaparral and uses a fan-shaped implement to knock chia seeds into a basket held below the plant. When we get to the edge of the village we can smell the cooking fires – the sweet, woody smell of roasting venison and the nutty smell of cooking acorn mush.

The villagers of Wiqangna lived in a land of plenty as did all the Tongva people who lived in the greater Los Angeles area. Their food was all around them, the modern equivalent of living inside a supermarket. They were well fed and healthy. I’ve described them in previous articles as being wealthy compared to other tribes, and the abundance of food contributed to that. They spent less time in gathering food and more time in business (trade) and recreation, as wealthy people today do.

The villagers of Wiqangna ate a nicely balanced mix of meat and plant material. I’ll cover the meat next week when I discuss hunting.

The villagers of Wiqangna gathered plant food from right outside their village, and it is plants we see every time we hike in the mountains. A favorite food was the berries of the hollyleaf cherry. Of particular use were the seeds that were ground into flour. Nutritious chia seeds were easily harvested and ground to mix with other foods or drink mixed into water. Many roots and tubers were harvested as well. Other plant foods included prickly pear cactus, wild grapes, elderberries, cattails, pine nuts and parts of yucca. Well over 100 different plants were harvested for food and seaweed and corn were traded from neighboring tribes. Beverages included berry juices, ciders, nut drinks and herbal teas.

But the staple food was acorn. Acorns have a high nutritional value, far superior to corn and grains. The nuts were gathered in huge quantities in late summer and stored in big granaries for use through the year. The acorns were shelled by hand and then pounded into a coarse flour using a stone mortar and pestle. Acorns have tannin in them, which when eaten tastes extremely bitter. Fortunately tannin is water-soluble, so it’s relatively easy to wash out of crushed acorns. Various methods were used to leach the tannin including soaking, suspending in moving water and using hot water rinses. The acorn flour was mainly eaten as mush, cooked in stone and clay pots over fire, but also fried into pancakes or baked in loaves.

I tried making some acorn mush many years ago from the oak tree next door. I vaguely remember after crushing the acorn meat I tried washing the flour wrapped in a towel in the sink, not doing it long enough, and the mush coming out too bitter. I believe I was successful the second time with more leaching.

What I do remember clearly is the rich smell of the cooking mush and thinking no one had smelled that smell in our valley for two and a half centuries. I encourage you to try it yourself. There are plenty of how-tos online or, for a quick fix, ground and leached acorn flour can be purchased. If you do try it, think about how many thousands of years people here in the Crescenta Valley tasted that nutty flavor and smelled that rich smell. It takes you back in time.

  mike lawler