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Diachs
In wokas pods properly roasted as
well the interior tissues are in the condition of a mucilaginous paste. The
seeds do not separate from this paste as readily as they do from the
mucilage in pods of the spokwas grade, and therefore the Indian has invented
another method of extracting them. This method is known as diachas (di-ä"-chäs").
About a peck of actual, of either the nokapk or the chiniakum grade, is
placed upon a sack or upon a hard smooth area of bare ground and pounded
with a small stone ská into a gluey
mass. To this is added about half the quantity of dry rotten wood (mu-lo')
of a sort that is easily crumbled into dust. This is pounded and rubbed into
the mass of pounded pods (Plate 11). Finely
pulverized charcoal or ashes is often substituted for the rotten wood when
the latter is not readily obtainable. After the manipulation is sufficient
to take up the moisture and leave the surface of the seed dry and free about
three quarts of the mixture is usually placed in a wicker screening basket (ti-a')
and the empty capsule skins screened out, the finer matter falling through
into a wokas shaker. Sometimes a screen is not used. The material in such
case is placed directly in a shaker, and the skins, after being brought to
the top by rotating, are shoved off. The winnowing of the seeds, as in the
preparation of lowak, follows, and the seeds are then made into lolensh by
the process already described.
The Grades of Wokas
Inquiry among the Indians as to the
relative quality of the different kinds of wokas, irrespective of the method
of cooking, but on the basis of what in the grain trade would be called
grade, elicited replies showing the following order: (1) Spokwas, (2)
stontablaks, (3) lowak, (4) nokapk, (5) chiniakum.
The significance of this arrangement of grades by the
Indians lies in the fact that the sequence they gave represents exactly the
relative degree of maturity of the seeds. In chiniakum and nokapk the seeds
in the still green pods are roasted at once, usually on the day after they
are gathered, and of these two grades the one called chiniakum is visibly
the less fully developed. In lowak the seeds have several days longer to
grow, since between the time when the pods are spread out in the drying
piles and the time when they actually become dry the seeds are undoubtedly
making considerable progress toward maturity. The stontablaks, lying in the
center of the drying piles, and therefore remaining moist for a longer time
than the pods on the surfaces of the piles, have a still further opportunity
for the development of their seeds, and in spokwas the seeds are of course
fully matured when they are gathered.
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Wokas, Primitive Food of
the Klamath Indians
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