OCR Text |
Show Indians Ate Acorns Some of the American Indian tribes considered acorns a staple item in their diet The acorns were ground in a mortar, soaked in water or put in baskets, set in running water, or boiled in water for two hours to remove the astringent tannin. tan-nin. It is this tannin in the acorns that makes them undesirable as cattle food. The kernels were pounded pound-ed and the resulting flour was used like cornmeal. Hundreds of thousands thou-sands of bushels of acorns fall from the acorn trees of the country each season. Some are eaten by squirrels and hogs, but most of them go to waste. |