Food

The dietary staple of California Indians was the acorn, the fruit of the oak tree. Native peoples collected them in the fall. They removed the kernels from the shells, placed them in the sun to dry out, pounded them into a flour, then repeatedly poured hot water over the flour to remove the bitter-tasting tannic acid. Then they boiled the acorn meal into a soup or mush or baked it into a bread. Other wild plant foods included berries, nuts, seeds, greens, roots, bulbs, and tubers. Sun-dried berries, roots, and seeds also were used to make cakes.

California Indians also ate insects. They picked grubs and caterpillars off plants. They boiled the caterpillars with salt, considering them a delicacy. They drove grasshoppers into pits, then roasted them. And they collected honeydew as another delicacy, rolling it into pellets. (Insects called aphids suck the juices of plants and secrete sweet-tasting honeydew.)

Rabbits were common throughout the culture area. The Indians used snares and other kinds of traps to catch them, as well as bows and arrows and clubs. In pursuit of deer, California Indians journeyed into the hill country, hunting with bows and arrows or herding them into corrals. Waterfowl also provided meat. Ducks, geese, swans, and other birds migrating from the north in the autumn descended on the marshes. The Indians shot at them from blinds with bows and arrows or bagged them from boats with nets.

California Indians had many different methods of fishing, including hooks and lines, spears, nets, and weirs (enclosures). Lakes, rivers, and the sea offered their catch. Along the seashore and in tidal basins, the Indians also gathered clams, oysters, mussels, abalones, and scallops. And they hunted seals and sea otters.

One type of California dwelling, tule (cattail) over a framework of poles