like manna FROM GOD: THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT TRADE IN SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA

Environmental History, Jul 2004 by Lutts, Ralph H

Native Americans of the eastern woodlands used the nuts as a source of food, eaten raw, boiled, or ground into flour. They sometimes used chestnut bark to cover their shelters and chestnut wood to make canoes. Chestnuts were known to Europeans before they invaded North America. The European chestnut Castanea sativa was used as food from ancient times to the present. It was boiled, roasted, made into flour, and included in bread, cake, pudding, and porridge. Historically, it has been an important staple food of the poorest classes.11 European settlers in America quickly discovered the value of the American chestnut. The nuts, which were much sweeter than those of the European chestnut, were valued highly. "There are also chestnuts here, like those of the Netherlands, which are spread over the woods," Adriaen van der Donck wrote in his account of the New Netherlands, in the present-day New York and New Jersey region, during a visit in the 16408. "Chestnuts would be plentier if it were not for the Indians, who destroy the trees by stripping off the bark for covering for their houses. They, and the Netherlanders also, cut down the trees in the chestnut season, and cut off the limbs to gather the nuts, which also lessens the trees."12 Other settlers found it more convenient simply to wait for the nuts to fall, which they often did in great quantity.

American chestnut wood was light, strong, easily split and worked, and remarkably resistant to decay. These qualities led to its use in log houses and other structures, furniture, interior trim, musical instruments, coffins, and cooperage, and also for shingles, mine timbers, railroad ties, telephone poles, and fence posts and rails. The abundance of rail fences in the southern Appalachians attested to the ease with which the wood split. (As one mountaineer said, to make a fence rail, just "cut off what length your rails you wanted ... you could stick a wedge in it an' it'd jus' pop open.") The wood was used as a veneer and as the core upon which other wood veneers were applied. Once a method was developed to extract the tannin from the wood, chestnut also became important to the tanning industry. Virginia had nine chestnut extract plants in 1914. The leaves were used in folk medicine to treat whooping cough, burns, swelling, and snakebite.13

The nuts were important to people living in the southern Appalachian mountains and, as in Europe, they were especially important to the poorer residents. When the nuts matured and fell from the trees in September and October, the ground often was covered inches deep with them. People gathered them and either ate them immediately or stored them after setting the nuts in the sun to dry. When dry nuts were stored, steps had to be taken to prevent weevil damage, because their larvae commonly infested the nuts. The nuts might be heated in boiling water, or preserved with salt.14 They were eaten fresh, boiled, roasted, baked, or ground into flour.15 Partially dried nuts were particularly appreciated, because of their increased sweetness.