Meanwhile corn had been parched, and some buffalo fats had been held over the coals on a stick, to roast. The parched corn and roast fats I pounded together in the corn mortar; and the pounded mass I stirred into the kettle. The mess was now ready to be eaten.
This dish we called mäpi´-nakapa´, or pounded-meal mush; from mäpi,´ something pounded, and nakapa´, mush, something mushy.
The dish was especially a morning meal; after eating it we started to work.
_Mä´nakapa._ A second way of preparing hard white corn was as follows: I pounded the corn in a mortar to a meal, but without first parching it. Most of this meal was fine, but there were many coarser bits in it, some of them as big as quarter grains of corn.
Water was put in a kettle; I added the pounded meal, and when it boiled put in beans. No fats were added.
As the mess boiled. I stirred it with a wooden paddle to prevent scorching; I did not stir with a horn spoon as the hot water softened and spoiled the horn.
A seasoning of spring salt, as we called it, was often added. A small palmful of the salt was mixed with a little water in a horn spoon; this dissolved the salt and let the sand and dirt drop to the bottom. The dissolved salt was poured off through the fingers, held to the mouth of the horn spoon; this strained out the sand and dirt. The salt turned the mush slightly yellow.
As the soft mush boiled up in the cooking, we were fond of dipping a horn spoon into it, and licking off the back of the spoon. This was especially a children’s habit.
Also at morning and evening meals we ate hard white corn parched and mixed with fats; or mạdạpo´zi i’ti´a, boiled whole corn.
This is a soft, or as you call it, a flour corn, and was perhaps the favorite variety grown by us. The word atạ´ki means white; but when applied to corn we translate soft white, to distinguish from atạ´ki tso´ki, or hard white.
The use of atạ´ki, or soft white, was very general, since it could be made into almost every kind of corn food used by us. “It is the one variety,” we used to say, “that can be used in any and every way.”
Soft white corn, parched and pounded into a meal, was boiled with squash and beans to make mäpi´ nakapa´. The unparched grain was pounded for meal to make mä´nakapa; but although good, we did not think the mush made from soft white meal was as good as that from the hard white corn meal.