Medicinal Monday - Acorns Naturally

This time of year anyone with an oak tree also has a yard full of acorns that they either pick up or hope that the squirrels forage them for the winter. Native Americans relied on acorns for food for thousands of years and also found medicinal uses for them as well. As a staple food source, acorns figured prominently in the diets and daily lives of countless generations. Gathering, processing, cooking, storing, and eating acorn were important and time-consuming activities, and the lives and traditions of Native Communities revolved around them, especially before the arrival of Europeans.  Although the acorn is no longer the focus of daily life for Native Americans, they still gather, prepare and eat foods made from acorns at special gatherings and celebrations.

Chuckachancy women pause in their work preparing acorns for grinding, California, ca. 1920 

About Acorns

Acorns were widely used as food by Native Americans on the East Coast and in California. The nutritional value of acorns is high, and depending on the species, acorns can contain up to 18 percent fat, 6 percent protein, and 68 percent carbohydrate, with the remainder being water, minerals, and fiber. Modern varieties of corn and wheat, in comparison, have about 2 percent fat, 10 percent protein, and 75 percent carbohydrate. Acorns are also good sources of vitamins A and C and many essential amino acids. 

Photograph with text of acorn cache of the Mono Indians, California. This is from a survey report of Fresno and Madera counties by L.D. Creel. Circa 1920.

Acorns vary in flavor from not bitter to almost too bitter to eat because of their high concentration of tannins. Oaks yielding the best tasting acorns include the white oak, live oak, and swamp chestnut oaks. Red oaks, turkey oaks and laurel oaks produce bitter acorns. Cream colored acorn meat is said to taste the best and acorns with yellow or orange meat said to taste bitter. 

There are a variety of processing techniques across Native cultures but in general Native Americans would gather the acorns and dry them, sometimes they were stored for future use or shelled and winnowed using a hammerstone/anvil combination and winnowing basket. The nuts were then pounded into a flour or a meal using a mortar and pestle.  The meal was sifted and the coarser meal was returned for more pounding.  The bitter tannins were leached from the flour by repeated flushing of hot or cold water. The flour could be stored or made into a soup or mush, bread was also made by placing the acorn flour on a hot stone to cook. 

Acorn Cache, Mr.s Henry Towatt, California, 1920

Medicinal Uses

By soaking acorns in water a brown tea like water was produced and used to treat inflamation on the skin; this water was also used for toothaches.  The Micmac used acorns as a dietary aid to induce thirst.  The Penobscot would eat acorns to induce thirst because they believed that drinking a lot of fresh water was beneficial.  The Isleta would eat acorns to give them greater sexual potency. Josselyn writes that New England Indians boiled acorns in lye from maple ashes to extract the oil which was used to anoint their limbs.

Did you know

One large healthy oak tree can produce over 1,000 acorns in just one year. 

Small mammals that feed on acorns include squirrels, mice, and other large rodents.

Acorns can constitute up to 25% of the diet of a deer in the autumn.

In Britain, one old tradition has it that if a woman carries an acorn on her person it will delay the aging process and keep her forever young. In the United States, botanists joke that even the greatest oak was once a little nut.

By analogy with the shape, in nautical language, the word acorn also refers to a piece of wood keeping the vane on the mast-head.