Читать книгу Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians - Gilbert Livingstone Wilson - Страница 25

Table of Contents

To make sunflower meal the seeds were first roasted, or parched. This was done in a clay pot, for iron pots were scarce in my tribe when I was young. The clay pot in use in my father’s family was about a foot high and eight or nine inches in diameter, as you see from measurements I make with my hands.

This pot I set on the lodge fire, working it down into the coals with a rocking motion, and raked coals around it; the mouth I tipped slightly toward me. I threw into the pot two or three double-handfuls of the seeds and as they parched, I stirred them with a little stick, to keep them from burning. Now and then I took out a seed and bit it; if the kernel was soft and gummy, I knew the parching was not done; but when it bit dry and crisp, I knew the seeds were cooked and I dipped them out with a horn spoon into a wooden bowl.

Again I threw into the pot two or three double-handfuls of seed to parch; and so, until I had enough.

As the pot grew quite hot I was careful not to touch it with my hands. The parching done, I lifted the pot out, first throwing over it a piece of old tent cover to protect my two hands.

Parching the seeds caused them to crack open somewhat.

The parched seeds were pounded in the corn mortar to make meal. Pounding sunflower seeds took longer, and was harder work, than pounding corn.