O’oti
November 6th, 2005
Consider this:
When the air first bites cold at autumn, the acorns drop to the spongy mold around the trunks of the tree, and the leaves blown down across the slanting sun pile themselves over them.
From Tsakawm Tsaa, the White Oak, falls the sweetest acorn, but it dries hard as a bone. Hard too is the acorn of Lawm Tsaa, the Water Oak, that falls to the ground and sometimes lies like green sea shells at the bottom of a pool. The acorn of Babakam Tsaa, the Live Oak, with the yellow, caterpillar-skin-cap, is soft but bitterest of them all.
It is the acorn of Hamsum Tsaa, the Black Oak, which hides beneath the large ochre leaves of autumn, that is bitter, but not too bitter, hard, but not too hard.
All these acorns will do, but the Black Oak acorn is hunted first. That is why this tree is sometimes called Maatim Tsaa, the Acorn Flour-bread Tree.
From “Ooti: A Maidu Legacy” by Richard Simpson, 1977. Celestial Arts, Milbrae, CA.
November 7th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Juanita writes:
Thank you for doing the saving our forest site. I like today’s story about the various oaks and acorns. I first lived in a house in a clearing in the forest, my dad was a logger and I worked in the paper industry (Crown Zellerbach, James River). I love hiking in the forest of the Columbia Gorge. I also remember picking huckleberries with my Grandma in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Little blackberries, too.
Thanks again.