Sho-Ban elders travel to Castle Rocks to pick pine nuts
Tribal elder Daisy Dixey uses an apple picker to access pine nuts.
By DANA HERNANDEZ
Sho-Ban News
ALMO — The Shoshone-Bannock Language and Culture program provided a daytrip for their staff and elders of the Nutrition program to pick pine nuts at Castle Rocks.
There were about 14 elders that went on the trip and they all helped collect the cones that carry the pine nuts. The Language and Culture program had their staff and their families to help the elders in picking.
After watching an elder pick some very high cones, I threw aside my camera and offered to help. Picking cones requires work because the biggest cones are at the top and you can only reach so far and take what is available then you have to go looking at another tree.
Picking requires patience and skill because the pine cones are stubborn and can be hard to remove. In other words, it was a competition to see who was more stubborn, the picker or the cones being picked. Tribal elders said, “It makes you wish you had a ladder when picking them.”
Picked pine nuts opening.
The picking started before noon and paused for lunch around 2 p.m. During this time I had only filled up one big sack and helped another elder fill a smaller bag. I used a tool known as an apple grabber and this made picking fairly easy. The only downside to picking is the sticky sap that the cones are covered in.
The sap has a deep fragrance, which is refreshing and others were saying that the sap has a sweet taste and tastes like a mango. Tribal elders advised that the size of the pine cone didn’t really matter as long as they were green, because the brown cones meant that they were dried up. Some trees were filled with brown cones.
Charlene Wahtomy was able to pick cones that were up high in the pinyon trees by climbing onto some rocks and picking them by hand. The cones she picked from these trees were already opening and the pine nuts could be seen inside.
When asking elders how they prepare their pine nuts, Daisy Dixey said she puts the cones out in the sun and lets them open up on there own. When consuming them, some said they bake/roast them and another said they just eat them raw.
Elders break for lunch.
The Shoshone-Bannock Language and Culture program will be roasting their pine nuts at the Language and Culture building some time this week. While others have already started or completed their pine nut process at home.
Castle Rocks is known for having pinyon trees and is also a well known spot for hikers and campers, but pine nuts have been a native food for many Native American tribes, especially the Shoshone and Bannock people.
According to Cathy Ronk who is part of the UC Master Gardener Program, she writes, the pinyon tree is slow growing, compact, long-lived, and overall a drought tolerant tree. It grows from the desert mountains of California, east to New Mexico and Texas, and north to Wyoming. She acknowledged the fact that Native American tribes have been using the pinyon trees for many years now and that the pine needles were used in teas, the inner bark was used to ward off starvation, and that the pine nuts could be grounded into flour.
