Estremaduran Oak

Weather: Last rain 2/11.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas, rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo. In the warm days green is pushing up along roadsides.

What’s gray: Salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple, sandcherry and sandbar willow; purple aster leaves.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: The Estremadura is the part of western Spain that was home to the conquistadors and some of the people who moved here in 1588. It’s town names include Albuquerque, Guadalupe, Trujillo, and Herrera del Duque.

I’ve been reading about it to see if its environment influenced the attitudes of early Spanish explorers and settlers.

It’s a dry plain surrounded by mountains with one main river winding through the center, the Tagus and one flowing in the south, the Guadiana. A little over 18 inches of rain fall a year, most of it coming in winter.

Here we get about 12 inches, with most of it coming in the summer monsoons and some in the winter snows.

Nature has responded to the Estremadura’s Mediterranean climate with trees that have wide branching habits, extensive root systems, and leaves that fall in summer. The one provides shade that slows evaporation. The second holds dry soil from blowing away and traps water wherever it lands. The third carpets the ground in summer, at the same time it reduces stress on defoliating plants.

At one time, the Estremadura was covered by woodland. The most common landscape today is the bosque Mediterráneo dominated by evergreen Holm oaks (Quercus ilex). To the south, where the climate is warmer, cork oak (Quercus suber) grows in the shade of the mountain ranges.

When trees are felled in large numbers, dense scrub intrudes. Brooms (Cistus), lavenders, and mastics (Pistacia lentiscus) replace Holm oaks. Scrub thickets, strawberries and heather supercede cork.

When that second generation protective scrub is removed, single species like brambles, heathers and gorse advance. These are more tolerant of drought, poor soils, and bush fires.

Along the mountainous perimeter, deciduous trees grow in the bosque de montaña. Melojos (Quercus pyrenaica) are most common, but there also are chestnut groves and clumps of Portuguese oak (Quercus faginea).

Near the Tagus and its more permanent tributaries riparian species grow. In the higher elevations, the bosque en galería sports willows, osiers, and alders. Aspen and ashes replace them at lower levels. In the lower bosque de ribera bushes, oleanders, tamujo brooms (Flueggea tinctoria), and vines grow under elms.

The most important Estremaduran landscape is the dehesa, an open pasture that supports cattle and cereal production. The primary wild plants are winter annuals that bloom in spring, the purple viper’s bugloss, tolpis, andryala, corn marigold, and yellow chamomile. The first is a borage, the rest members of the composite family.

The dehesa may originally have been created by wild fires, but the open savannah has been maintained for thousands of years by humans. The oaks, especially the cork oak, have adapted. The latter produces a thick coat of bark every year to protect itself.

The only oaks I’ve seen in this area were Gambel oaks in the area of Bandolier. It was 13 years after the Cerro Grande Fire had scorched the bark. The tops had died back, and new growth risen from the roots.

Notes: Instituto de Educación Secundaria les Dr.Fernández Santana. "Vegetation of Extremadura," school web site.

Photographs: Quercus gambelii near Bandolier, 4 July 2013. The first was taken on a slope at 8,159'. The clump in the last was at 7,344'. The others were on flatter land at 7,047'.

Red Piki

Weather: A little rain Wednesday.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo.

What’s gray: Salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple, sandcherry and sandbar willow; purple aster leaves.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: Piki dyed red with amaranth existed in the late nineteenth century. However, kachinas giving it to onlookers at their dances appears to be more recent.

In 1891, Jesse Walter Fewkes said most piki was the color of "woodwork," but that "bright red striped and other colored piki are made." He said it was not unusual to see "several rolls of variegated pi-ki tied together side by side" on the "walls in dwelling rooms."

He saw a "considerable quantity of red" among the prizes the clowns and kachinas brought to the Niman ceremonial footrace at Hano. It wasn’t given to spectators, but to the winners. He added this was the only race that featured prizes.

Hano is the Tewa-speaking pueblo that shares First Mesa with Walpi and Sichomovi.

Piki was used in ceremonies, but its color wasn’t important. Voth says at Soyal in the early 1890s at Oraibi on Third Mesa, some Soyal "Katcinas carry presents (piki, watermelons, corn, etc.)" and priests throw presents to spectators.

A few years later, Barbara Friere-Marreco said "red and yellow mowa, used by certain kachina, is made by mixing vegetal dyes in the dough" at Hano. Fewkes reported amaranth was "used to impart a red color to the piki or paper bread distributed at katcina exhibitions" without specifying where or when.

A similar progression from noting the use of amaranth to vague comments of function appears in the observations at Zuñi made by Matilda Coxe Stevenson. In 1901, she simply said women occasionally dyed their piki red. In 1915, she added the colored wafer bread was "carried by impersonators of anthropic gods and thrown by them to the populace between the dances" without specifying which dances.

Observers in the 1930s reported seeing colored piki, but again were vague. Alfred Whiting said amaranth was "used as a dye to color the piki (wafer bread) a brilliant pink." At Hotevilla, Mischa Titiev saw kachinas use "parched and popped corn, melons, piki bread in various colors, and baked sweet corn" as a comic gift at an October dance.

Hotevilla is the Third Mesa settlement made by the conservatives who withdrew from Oraibi in 1906. Because it has no physical home for its kachinas, the spirits don’t disappear at Niman, but are available for harvest rituals.

By the 1970s, tourists and others uniformly remember red piki being given at Niman, the only outdoor kachina ceremony. Harold Courlander saw "kachinas give out bread, piki, fruit and other gifts to spectators." Raymond Sokolov noticed "brightly colored piki, made from white corn meal to which red or yellow dyes have been added, is distributed only by katsinas during the dances."

Between Titiev and Courlander the number of people who attended public dances increased, and their knowledge decreased. Pueblos became interchangeable, all dancers were kachinas, and gift giving was assumed.

In fact, the major gift giving dance had been the Basket Dance described in the posting made 5 February 2012. However, a major change had occurred. Baskets originally were thrown to favored men in the audience. As the number of spectators increased, women no longer spent time making special baskets since they were unlikely to land in the desired hands. Instead, Helga Teiwes says at Shungopovi on Second Mesa, "enormous amounts of plastic and aluminum kitchen items, rolls of paper towels and toilet paper, boxes of Cracker Jack" are "showered on the crowd."

Today, the knowledge of red piki as a gift is both more universal and less specific. Native Seeds notes, "The Hopi" use one of its offered varieties to "make a scarlet natural food dye to color piki bread."

A more boutique seed company has altered that to say the same plant is "still used by the Hopi to color cornbread rich red." Corn bread, of course, is not treated with lime derived from calcium, so that may explain why the color is "red" and not the "pink" of Whiting.

Another company has gone a step farther. It markets Supai Red Parch Corn as a "traditional southwestern snack, often accented with chile lime salt!" You see those green fruits on packages of lime-flavored corn chips.

It’s a long ways from the Hopi who used piki as a traveler’s food and the Iroquois who used parched corn. It’s even farther from the time when only the bravest ran from kachinas at Niman, because if they were caught they were beaten with yucca whips. Only those who evaded them got piki.

It’s farther still from the time when Alexander Stephen said a red ear was kept for four days where a person died. Then it was attached to the ceiling. "If it is still there next planting season, he who has the bravest heart takes it out and plants it."

Notes:
Courlander, Harold. The Fourth World of the Hopis, 1971.

Fewkes, J. Walter Fewkes. "The Wa-Wac-Ka-Tci-Na, a Tusayan Foot Race," The Essex Institute Bulletin 24:113-133:1892 and "A Contribution to Ethnobotany," American Anthropologist 9:14-21:1896.

Friere-Marreco, Barbara, William Wilfred Robbins, and John Peabody Harrington. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Sokolov, Raymond A. Fading Feast, 1981.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. The Zuñi Indians, 1904, and Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians, 1915.

Teiwes, Helga. Hopi Basket Making, 1996.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944.

Voth, H. R. and George A. Dorsey. The Oraibi Soyal Ceremony, 1901.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939.

Photographs:
1. Red amaranth plants have been buried by snow twice this season; 23 November 2014.

2. The Hopi did not cultivate a pure red corn; instead they treated ears of all red kernels as something special. The Italians are the ones who created a red flint corn in the Valsugana valley. Floriana was given to seed companies in this country by William Rubel.

3. The meal has red shells mixed with yellow and white interiors; from Mohr-Fry Ranches and Ian Johnson, Lodi, California.

4. Recently, Carl Barnes, bred Glass Gem specifically for its brilliant colors. Barnes was a part-Cherokee agricultural extension agent in Kansas. He developed the corn after he retired to Oklahoma. He thinks it came from crossing Pawnee miniature corn with an Osage red flour corn and another Osage corn called Gray Horse.

Piki

Weather: Sun currently reaching a level around 5 pm that sends its rays through the house from a south window into my eyes when I sitting on the north side.

Snow that was compressed by walking on it has turned into ice that persists in shadows. Elsewhere, the ground softens during the day. When I was in the post office yesterday, a man said he was ordering a load of base coarse for his drive. Last snow 1/30.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo. One man burned his field yesterday; I think he was using a flame thrower to ignite moisture laden weeds.

What’s gray: Salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple, sandcherry and sandbar willow; purple aster leaves.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds. When I was out this morning, I saw cranes in a hay field near the river; Canadian geese were in the next field where vegetable are grown.

Weekly update: Piki is a thin corn bread made from dough like tortilla that’s cooked on a griddle. The sheets are folded or stacked. They were portable food taken by travelers, and eaten during kachina rituals.

During the fourth day of Soyal, spirit impersonators ate white wafer bread. The ceremonial meal after Powamu included piki and mutton stew containing bean plants. In the officiating kiva, the men ate "gravy, unrolled flat sheets of piki, and boiled beans."

Most often the wafer bread was made from white corn. Sheets made from blue meal are used for rites of passage like marriage and funerals. A few sheets were buried with eagles after Niman.

While it’s most associated with the Hopi today, Matilda Cox Stevenson saw Zuñi make he’wa in the early 1890s. A few decades later, Barbara Freire-Marco reported Santa Clara women used more wheat than corn for bread, but a half dozen women still made buwa. Hano called it mowa.

The three secrets to making piki are the dough, the coloring, and the stone. The use of an alkaline hydroxide solution to create an elastic dough was discussed in the posting "Corn Harvest," for 30 November 2008.

Marlene Sekaquaptewa says piki dough is made from finely ground meal and boiling water that’s stirred with a  stick made from greasewood. Then, boiling water is strained through greasewood ashes into the dough. The blue meal changes color when the pH reaches 8.

The Zuñi used slaked lime when Matilda Cox Stevenson saw them. At Hano, Barbara Freire-Marco said they used salt bush ashes. If Atriplex canescens wasn’t available in winter, then sheep dung was used.

The cooking surface is a flat stone heated over a cedar wood fire in a room reserved for the stone. Traditionally, women greased them with crushed watermelon seeds. Freire-Marco said Zuñi used chewed squash seeds, Santa Clara used marrow fat, and Hano any animal grease.

On Second Mesa today, Joyce Saufkie uses a mix of Crisco oil and pig brains. In the past she used cattle brains, but she says they aren’t available anymore.

The dough is spread on the stone, and picked off by hand. "Joyce says she retains all feeling in her palms and fingers, despite the intense heat, explaining that her swift motion and the insulating properties of the wafer-thin layers prevent injury."

Notes:
Fewel, Clifford. "Joyce Saufkie and Her Family Keep the Art of Making Piki Bread Alive on Second Mesa," Canku Ota, October 2013.

Friere-Marreco, Barbara, William Wilfred Robbins, and John Peabody Harrington. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916, on Hano and Santa Clara.

Spencer, Victoria and Marlene Sekaquaptewa. "Piki of the Hopi Indians," University of Pennsylvania Museum Expedition, March 1995.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons, on Soyal.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians, 1915.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944, on Powamu.

Voth, H. R. "Notes on the Eagle Cult of the Hopi," Publications of the Field Museum of Natural History. Anthropological Series 11:105, 107-109:February 1912.

Photographs: Good photographs of piki can be found in a You Tube video posted by Marlene Sekaquaptewa.

1. Corn chips made with blue or white meal. The blue uses whole grain corn, vegetable oil and sea salt. The white has more finely ground corn, oil and salt.

2. Cranes near the Río Grande, 8 February 2015.

3. Very dark meal finely ground, purple corn from Peru.

4. Varying shades of blue from processing. The corn chip is on top. Bottom right is a stone ground blue tortilla from whole corn, water and lime (the alkaline).  Bottom left is a blue corn taco shell made from blue corn masa flour and vegetable oil. Masa is tortilla flour made from corn, water and lime.

5. Medium ground blue corn meal still has the blue shells separate from the whiter interiors.

6. Geese in the field next to that of the cranes, 8 February 2015.

Corn in Parts

Weather: Friday’s snow is still on the ground.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo. Men were pruning their apple trees this week.

What’s gray: Salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple, sandcherry and sandbar willow; purple aster leaves.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds. Horses have been brought into the valley for winter feeding.

Weekly update: Corn and beans were the staples of the Hopi diet, with corn more important in the ceremonial life. Almost every part had a role.

Pollen and meal were sprinkled on objects, people and kachinas. Meal had other uses, but there was much more of it. When pollen was unavailable, symbolic grains were made from meal. Among the neighboring Navajo pollen was considered the more sacred.

Silk is the conduit that transfers pollen fallen from the tassels above to the ovaries to which it is connected. Isleta used strands in their Corn Dances.

Dried husks hold tobacco for smoking. They also are used as wraps for collections of foods and objects distributed during Powamu. At Zuñi such packets are given to healers who perform curing ceremonies.

The entire plant is used in the rituals that follow Powamu. Mischa Titiev called them repeats. They redo the central part of the February ceremony, raising young plants, but with the more important corn.

For the Water Serpent Dance, plants are brought into the central kiva where they are placed in conical mounds arranged in rows like a field. The water serpent looks over and them and is fed meal. When satisfied, he knocks over the stalks, signifying they are ready to harvest.

During the Puppet Dance, the germination god, Muyingwa, stands with a female doll on each side behind the rows of planted corn. The dolls bend over mealing stones to grind. At the end, a bowl of sweet corn meal is passed among those watching.

Niman, the last of the ceremonies in the kachina calendar, is the most realistic. Sweet corn is raised outdoors. When it’s ripe, the kachinas are sent home to oversee the summer monsoons. The corn is eaten. The feast is repeated in September, after the regular sweet corn crop is harvested.

Notes:
Elmore, Francis H. Ethnobotany of the Navajo, 1944.

Jones, Volney H. The Ethnobotany of the Isleta Indians, 1931.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians, 1915.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939.

Photographs:
1-3. Corn grown by Dani Kellogg in Santa Fé, 3 August 2010. #1 shows flower debris captured by the upturned leaves, #2 the female silk flower with pollen in hairs, #3 the male tassel.

4-5. Corn purchased off-season, January 2015; can see how the silk connects under the kernels and how the cob serves as a receptacles for seeds.