CHAPTER II
The Pecan—
Nature’s Most Highly Concentrated Staple Food
The recognition by thinking people of pecans as a desirable staple food is no new thing.
They were a staple food of the American Indians, and the very name “Pecan” is an Indian word, originally pacan. From a variety of hickory, which is generally believed to be the pecan, the Indians secured an oil which they used to thicken venison broth, to season hominy or corn cakes, and of which they also made a drink. How many centuries back the Indian use of pecan dates, none can tell, but the pecan tree has been fixed by fossil remains of trees and nuts, as far back as the lower Cretaceous period.
Bancroft, recording the discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto tells how in 1541, De Soto came upon a region where the fruits were abundant, “the pecan nut, the mulberry and two varieties of plums furnished the natives with articles of food.”
Xavier Charlevoix, French missionary and traveller, who descended the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1722, considered the pecan of sufficient
importance to publish a very definite description of these nuts in his “History of New France,”7
