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Shnaps and Lowak
Shnaps
In the preparation of shnaps from
shelled wokas, kernels, or lolensh, the primitive method of roasting with
live coals in a wokas shaker, as described under shiwulinz, seems to have
been entirely discarded. The frying pan is now used instead by all the
Indians. A handful or two of lolensh, either the fresh or the dried and
stored product, about enough to barely cover the bottom, is thrown into a
hot frying pan and roasted briskly over a fire until it is nicely parched
and slightly browned, the pan being shaken meanwhile to prevent scorching.
The kernels swell, crack their coats, and roll over like animate objects,
but do not explode like popcorn. When the parching is completed the grains
are roughly spherical, with a tuberculate surface (Plate
12, fig. 2), and the bulk of a mass of the kernels has increased two and
one third to three times. A thick-bottomed cast-iron frying pan is much
better for parching wokas than a thin-bottomed one of pressed steel, a much more even and not extremely high temperature being
thus secured.
The parched wokas, or shanks, has a delicious flavor,
somewhat similar to that of popcorn or, more especially, parched corn. When
freshly parched it is more crisp and appetizing, and doubtless more fully
digestible, than after it has been allowed to stand in a humid atmosphere
and absorb moisture.
Shanks is often eaten dry, and in this state it is most
palatable to white people, but ordinarily the Indian places it in a dish and
pours over it barely enough cold water to cover it. It is then eaten with a
spoon, with or without salt, a modern innovation. Sometimes the shanks is
finely ground before the addition of the water, and the preparation is then
known as shlotish (shlo-tish'). In primitive times the Klamaths used for
eating wokas a spoon cut from the breast bone of the swan, which is
conveniently shaped for the purpose. Their name for such a spoon is
sh'-o-kobh'.
Lowak
The nearly mature but still had
wokas pods that make up the print are ordinarily spread upon the ground to
dry, in flat-topped piles about 8 inches thick (Plate 8).
Each day the margin of the pile is added to as new polo are brought in from
the marsh. The bright sunshine prevalent at the time of the wokas harvest
hastens the drying, thick and mucilaginous as the pods are, and in from one
to two weeks those on the surface and margins of the piles are thoroughly
dry. The pods thus dried are placed on a mat or piece of gunny sack and
pounded with a stone or short pestle (skâ).
The seeds are thoroughly dry and drop out easily, and when the mass is
sufficiently pounded portions of it are placed on a shaker and the light
corky or pithy pieces of the pods are winnowed out. Some of the women,
before winnowing the seed on a shaker, separate the coarser pieces of waste
matter by running the whole mass through a coarse wicker sifter (ti-a').
Seeds thus prepared from dried pods and still covered by their shells are
known as lo-wak' (Plate 12, fig. 1). They are
commonly stored in sacks for winter use. The screenings as (kakt-chi-as)
from lowak, though made up mostly of the light corky pieces of the dry body
of the pods, do contain a small percentage of seeds. They were sometimes
stored, in the old days, for use in case of famine.
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Wokas, Primitive Food of
the Klamath Indians
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