The Piñon Pine - The Indians Own Tree
When I section-hiked the PCT from Tehachapi to Walker Pass several Mays ago, as we neared the northern end of that trip we took a lunch break one day under a grove of piñon pines. As we reached into our pack for our usual lunch of cheese, rye crackers, and salami, we began to notice that the forest floor was littered with pine nuts. While some had become food for rodents, squirrels, and other foraging animals since dropping to the ground the prior autumn, most were so very edible. Soon we were each on our hands and knees collecting cones and harvesting their delectable contents ($29 a pound at our local co-op). I ate my fill and packed an empty bag with more nuts which I brought home with me when I left the trail. This is David Foscue’s story of the pine nut.
Piñons are coveted for their nutitious seeds. One pound of seeds may contain 3,000 calories. The pine nuts were collected by Indians as stores for the winter. Listen again to Muir: “This is undoubtably the more important food-tree on the Sierra, and furnishes the Mono, Carson, and Walker River Indians with more and better nuts than all the other species together. It is the Indian’s own tree, and many a white many they have killed for cutting it down.”
A diligent collector in the prime collecting time can gather up to seventy pounds of the seeds. Humans, of course, are not the only beneficiaries of the piñon’s largess. Pine nuts are a favorite of many animals from the piñon jay to the pack rat — it is reported that over forty pounds of nuts may be found in a pack rat’s cache. The wide popularity of piñon nuts is a matter of survival, for the seeds of the piñon lack wings and depend on animals for distribution.
The piñon of the Sierras is single-needled pine. It is a mutation of the piñon found further east on which the needles appear in bunches of two. The two-needled piñon is subject to infestation by the piñon spindle gall midge which appears to have evolved with the tree. The insect lays its eggs on the flat leaves, when they hatch the larvae crawl into the crotch between paired needles. The irritation caused by the tiny larvae simulates the plant to grow tissue forming a gall over the larval wound. The gall covers the wound but it also protects the enclosed larvae.
The gall midge evolved to inhabit the single-needled piñon which lack the needle crotches to shelter the larvae. According to Ronald Lanner, the single-needle piñon developed from the twin-needled variety but “one of the potential needle sites is suppressed by the … mutation. Our gall midge neutralizes the mutation. The feeding of the larvae suppresses the needle-suppression mechanism, allowing both of the potential needles to develop, though they reach only a fraction of their full length. The needles are galled and the larvae grow up in the same type of needle-crotch home as those in … two needled pines.” Needles at unaffected locations on the tree remain single.
Kit Carson, John C. Frémont and the Piñon Nut
The piñon played a supporting role in two dramas that have become part of the lore of the PCT. One involved “The Pathfinder,” John C. Frémont, extraordinary adventurer and the first Republican presidential candidate. The other tale involves the ill-fated Donner party.
Frémont, and his scout, Kit Carson, led the first recorded winter crossing of the Sierras. What Frémont expected to take a week became an ordeal of five weeks. As they faced the Sierras their supplies were running low. Fortunately Indians supplied them with pine nuts! On January 24, 1844, Frémont wrote:
A man was discovered running towards the camp as we were about to start this morning, who proved to be an Indian of rather advanced age–a sort of forlorn hope, who seemed to have been worked up into the resolution of visiting the strangers who were passing through the country. He seized the hand of the first man he met as he came up, out of breath, and held on, as if to assure himself of protection. He brought with him, in a little skin bag, a few pounds of the seeds of a pine-tree … . We purchased them all from him.
The Donner Party - Rescued by Pine Nuts?
George Donner’s group was not as successful in its attempt to cross the Sierras two winters later. In a snow storm, the party reached what is now known as Donner Lake in early November 1846. Attempts to reach the pass failed and the party returned to the lake and settled in. Although many of their animals froze providing unexpected food, their provisions were soon exhausted and the new settlers faced slow starvation.
On December 16 a group of fifteen left the lake in an attempt to cross the mountains for help. Using the same term Frémont applied to the old Indian who first provided him piñon nuts, they called themselves the “Forlorn Hope Party.” Death reduced the group to seven. As we now know, the dead sustained the living.
The forlorn and depleted party finally came to an Indian village on January 10. The Indians provided acorn bread to the party but the group was so weakened their strength could not be restored. The leader, William Eddy, became sick on the bread. Donner’s Daughter, Eliza, writes how Eddy regained his strength:
… the chief with much difficulty procured for Mr. Eddy, a gill of pine nuts which the latter found so nutritious that the following morning, on resuming travel, he was able to walk without support.
Eddy walked fifteen miles that day to a small settlement where he was able to organize a party to rescue the other six surviving members of Forlorn Hope. Eventually three rescue parties, including one led by Eddy, were organized to return to Donner Lake. Forty-six members of the Donner party were rescued. Forty-two did not make it. The toll surely would have been greater but for the pine nuts given by the Indians to Eddy.
Think about the Donner party the next time you sprinkle piñon pine nuts on your salad.
