Yosemite > Library > Central Sierra Miwok Dictionary > V. Reminiscences (Page 68) >

Next: Reminiscenses continued (Page 69) • Contents • Previous: Two Songs: (Page 67)

Central Sierra Miwok Dictionary with Texts (1960) by L. S. Freeland and Sylvia M. Broadbent

Texts: V. Reminiscences (Page 68)

[click to enlarge]

V. REMINISCENCES

(East Central Dialect)

1. I know—[you want to know about the time when] we were little children.

2. Of my father I know nothing at all. But my mother I remember would spread out acorns to dry in the sun, and later she would pound them, and after winnowing them she would grind them fine with a pestle. The acorn mush they would eat with mushrooms, eat it soft from the hand. With yellow mushrooms and with ground-squirrel meat they would eat the acorn bread. Gray squirrel they would eat, quail they would eat, rats, and wood rats, all the people would eat. My father would shoot ground squirrels and eat them himself. They would take yellowjackets’ nests, and they would eat them with acorn bread.

3. My grandmother would pound acorns, and my grandfather would fish for salmon. The people ate deer meat then. And they ate a mush made of all kinds of seeds. They would grind the seeds, and then mash them in a deep mortar; then they would roll it in a ball and cook it. They would cook cabbage, too, and then leach it in water.

4. The people would have contests. The women would contest among themselves, the men would contest among themselves. They would play the man’s ball game. A man would kick, playing ball, he would run. He would out-distance everyone, when the people

Next: Reminiscenses continued (Page 69) • Contents • Previous: Two Songs: (Page 67)

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/central_sierra_miwok_dictionary/page_68.html