Islay

 

The following information was taken from the book "Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California" by Jan Timbrook.

Rosaceae

Prunus ilicifolia (NUTT.) WALP

(B, I) 'akhtayukhash

(CR) wam

(O) chto

(V) 'akhtatapish

Rose Family

HOLLY_LEAVED CHERRY

(Sp) Islay

The Spanish word "islay" (pronounced to rhyme with "fly") is derived from slay', the Salinan Indian name for this plant (Harrington 1944:38). Like the Chumash terms, it refers to both the plant and its cherrylike fruit. Prunus ilicifolia is the most common wild cherry in coastal California south of San Francisco Bay, and it was used as food by every group in whose territory it occurs (Timbrook 1982:163). Like most other Indian peoples, the Chumash did eat the fruit pulp but made far greater use of the inner kernel or seed, which was a highly valued food source. As several consultants said, "the kernel was the really esteemed part of the islay."

Islay fruits were picked in late summer. One must never beat the tree with sticks or climb up in it, the Chumash said, for it is very delicate. They pulled the ripe, red fruits one by one from the trees, and also picked up those that had already fallen to the ground. They picked the green fruits, too, but kept them in a pile separate from the others.

For gathering islay fruit, the Chumash made special network bags from cordage of Indian-hemp (Apocynum) or nettle (Urtica). They wove the meshes just finely enough to keep the islay from falling through and attached a hoop of willow or sumac wood at the mouth to hold the bag open. Islay bags varied in size; the ones men used were large, about eighteen inches long and a foot in diameter when full. As a person gathered islay, the bag hung on the chest, suspended from a woven carrying strap that passed behind the neck or over the shoulder. When the bag was filled, it could be carried on the back with the strap as a tumpline over the head. The fruit was emptied from the gather­ ing bag into a larger, closely woven sack which had drawstrings at both ends. The islay could be transported in this sack, but people would often clean it near the gathering site and bring home only the pits.

They piled up the fruit on a clean-swept earth floor or in a basin­ shaped basket and left it for several days until the pulp rotted. This they rubbed off with the hands or washed off in the creek, leaving just the pits. Next, they heated stones in the fire and placed them in a bas­ ket of water. The cleaned islay pits could be simply immersed in the hot water, or the water could be poured over them, or they might be boiled for a short time. After this preliminary treatment, the pits were allowed to sit overnight or spread out to dry in the sun for two or three days. Then.the pits were cracked open with a rock and the kernels were removed. Some of Harrington's consultants said that at this point the shells from the green islay fruit, which had been kept separate, were burned and their ashes mixed with water to a doughy consi tency, then molded into cakes for use later in the cooking process. Only the shells from green islay were used for this purpose.

After this, it was all right to mix the kernels of both red and green islay fruit together. These dry kernels could be stored indefinitely and were usually kept in the home in large baskets. The storage baskets for islay and other seeds were two and a half feet wide and two feet high. People made sure to place them on sticks or on tule mats, not right on the ground.

Before one could eat the islay seeds, they had to be leached to remove the hydrocyanic acid which makes them not only extremely bitter but poisonous. If islay was not properly prepared, the Chumash said, it could make a person very sick. According to one of Harrington's con­ sultants, in historic times when the Indians got tuberculosis and were spitting up blood, they blamed it on the islay. The toxicity of Prunus pits is discussed in more detail elsewhere (Timbrook 1982).

There was some variation in the methods of islay preparation, leach­ ing, and cooking described by Harrington's consultants. Three processes were reported for leaching islay, and. they all differ somewhat from the way acorns were leached (see Quercus). One might place the whole kernels in a sack and repeatedly dip it into hot water (Saunders 1920: 57-59). Or the islay could be mashed and placed in a basket in the creek to let water run through it. The third method was to place the islay kernels in a steatite olla, cover them with cold or lukewarm water and heat them on the fire. When the water had nearly boiled, it was poured off, replaced with clean water, and heated again. With rela­ tively fresh kernels one should change the water three times, but only twice with old ones because they were less bitter.

After completing the leaching process, the Chumash would boil the islay kernels in water until done. Since cooking took several hours, they did this in the steatite olla over direct heat rather than in baskets with hot stones. As the kernels were boiling, some cooks took the ash cake they had previously prepared from the burned green islay hulls and added an amount equal to the last joint of two fingers. They believed this would counteract any residual bitterness.
 
When the water had nearly boiled away and the islay had become soft, they stirred and mashed it with a wooden paddle. Using the paddle or an abalone shell, they scooped the mashed islay a little at a time out of the pot and molded it between the hands into round balls, from the size of a biscuit up to five inches in diameter. These were rolled in pinole flour of juniper or grass seeds and placed on a basket tray.

The prepared islay, called shukuyash, resembled beans in both flavor and reddish color. The Chumash consultants all agreed that it was a good-tasting and prized food. Its nutritional role in the diet is not yet understood; Analysis of raw Prunus ilicifolia seeds has yielded contradic­ tory results: one study determined that the kernels contained almost no starch, yet another found them to be over 70 percent carbohydrates (Earle and Jones 1962; Gilliland 1985:46). The composition of the seed kernels prepared the way they would have been eaten traditionally has not been studied.

Islay balls could be kept as long.as a week and were commonly offered to visitors. The Chumash often ate them with roasted squirrel, gopher, or other meat. Coyote had them for breakfast in one Chumash myth (Blackburn 1975:216), and they are mentioned in the song of the Santa Rosa Island Fox Dance (Hudson et al. 1977:71). Offerings of islay seeds or prepared islay balls were an important part of most ceremonial occa­ sions (Hudson et al. 1977; Hudson, Timbrook, and Rempe 1978: 141).

The Spanish explorers described a number of foods eaten by the Chumash and other California Indians, and at least two of these early accounts may refer to islay. The diarist of the Cabrillo voyage referred to a white seed the size of maize, from which good "tamales" were made (Bolton 1925:30). This sounds very much like the islay balls of the Chumash. With their shells still on, holly-leaved cherry seeds are white and about the size of maize kernels prepared into hominy, from which Mexican tamales are made. Longinos Martinez mentioned a large seed called silao which, despite its bitterness, was washed, dried, and roasted to make one of the Indians' most important foods (Longinos Martinez 1961A6). This name closely resembles the Salinan name slay'. On the other hand, the even larger seed of buckeye (Aesculus) was prepared in a similar way by peoples to the north of the Chumash.

Islay was a significant trade item between Chumash groups of differ­ent regions. Some people said that the islanders did not bother to gather their own, but instead made shell-bead money to sell to the mainland Chumash in return for as much islay, acorns, chia, and pil (Calandrinia) seed as they could carry. A larger-fruited, less spiny-leaved form of holly-leaved cherry (subspecies lyonii) is common on the larger Channel Islands. The island inhabitants surely harvested some local fruit, but their reliance upon mainland sources indicates islay's wide­ spread importance as a food resource (Timbrook 199y52). In trade, the seeds were measured with women's basketry hats; one hatful of islay was worth two of acorns.

Harrington's consultants remembered getting permission to gather islay on Alisal Ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley. Different families went at different times to gather their own supplies. They met at night, built fires to keep the bears away, and had singing, dancing, and_,,praying at the camps. Another common gathering location was in Mission Canyon. The Chumash name for a place near Mission Santa Barbara was 'akhtayukhash, islay (Applegate 19756:25). Islay pits have not been used as food in recent times (Gardner 1965:285-286).

Occasionally the Chumash did eat the islay fruit pulp, either fresh from the tree or mashed and spread out on a flat rock in the sun. When the pulp had dried, they rolled it up and ate it like fruit leather. Modern Chumash remember the fruit being fermented to make a drink called "tweeswin" (Weyrauch 1982:20). Somewhat like a fruit wine, tesgiiino was a mission-era introduction from Mexico, as the Chumash ma_de no fermented beverages in prehistoric times (Geiger and Meighan 1976:89).