Buckeye Ball Processing

Buckeye balls are a traditional food source for many Native people in Central California. Both buckeye balls and the California Buckeye tree which they grow on are called poló in Nisenan and úunu in Northern Sierra Miwok.

Poló

'Buckeye ball, California Buckeye' (Nisenan)

Úunu

'Buckeye ball, California Buckeye' (Northern Sierra Miwok)

California Buckeye balls (photo by John Morgan, CC BY 2.0)

Buckeye balls contain poisonous neurotoxic glycosides which must be removed prior to eating. The Nisenan and other Native peoples of Central California have several methods to make buckeye balls safe for consumption which involve lengthy cooking and/or leaching in water.

Here you can watch a film of Lizzie Enos, a Nisenan woman from the Auburn area, as she demonstrates one method of processing buckeye balls:

WARNING. Do not attempt any activities described above. The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians ("Tribe") makes no guarantee as to their risks/safety and provides this information for educational purposes. Engaging in these activities may result in serious injury or death. The Tribe is not responsible for any harm resulting from attempting these activities.

About the video

Lizzie Enos circa 1961 (photo by Samuel A. Barrett)

Lizzie Enos was a Nisenan woman from the Auburn area who spoke the Central Hill dialect of Nisenan, which differs somewhat from the heritage dialects of the SSBMI Community, Valley Nisenan and Southern Hill Nisenan. Lizzie Enos was a close friend of Lillie Williams, who was one of the daughters of SSBMI Matriarch Pamela Cleanso Adams, and the two spent a great deal of time together.

In the 1920s-1960s, Lizzie Enos worked with several different anthropologists and linguists to share her knowledge of Nisenan language, culture, history, and lifeways. In 1961, American Indian Films produced a documentary showing Lizzie Enos processing buckeye balls, which you can watch at the link above.

Samuel A. Barrett, a UC Berkeley anthropologist and linguist and later the Director of the Milwaukee Public Museum, started the American Indian Films project near the end of his career in the 1960's in response to growing concern amongst anthropologists about their students' lack of opportunities to learn about traditional practices directly from Native people. To address this, Barrett worked with cultural practitioners to record traditional practices and publish documentary films via the American Indian Films project.

From 1961 to 1964, Barrett and American Indian Films published 15 documentaries on a variety of topics. In addition to the film above in which Lizzie Enos demonstrates how to process buckeye balls, they produced films showing Native people processing other foods sources like acorns & pine nuts. Additionally, they produced a series of films on Pomo basketmaking and films on several other traditional practices. In the process of creating the 15 published films, they recorded an additional 360,000+ feet of unpublished 16mm footage.

You can find a complete list of the published documentaries and read more about Samuel A. Barrett and the American Indian Films project here.

Want to know more?

If you have any questions about the Nisenan or Northern Sierra Miwok languages, or about this film, please contact us at language@ssband.org.

Webpage last updated: 2025-03-27