A nutritional bright-spot in the Western Cross Timbers was the mesquite tree, whose pollen signature appears around 7,000 BP, but was probably here far longer. The mesquite migrated northward and covered the Southwest, the species that made itself home in the post oak’s retinue is the honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa). This desert-bred tree has roots that spread fifty feet with a taproot that can grow one hundred feet deep. Travelers complained that in Texas one had to dig his firewood because most of the tree’s wood is underground. Early observers found that mesquites were part of the post oak community, well-behaved in those days because fire and crowding caused them to grow vertical and those grassfires refused to allow them to spread away from the timber. The mesquite brought to the area what neither pecans nor acorns or buffalo could provide, a nutritious food source that actually produces more pods in a dry year. Every part of the tree was used, besides food, the red-purple hardwood twice as hard as oak, was used for atlatls, clubs, digging sticks, and later bows, The sap made a glue for hafting projectile points. Mesquites can produce twenty pounds of pulp-laden pods by fall. Each of the pod’s summer stages had a name and method of preparation. The flavor and food value of the pods varied from tree to tree, and since the trees lived for hundreds of years, Native families must have claimed the rights to specific trees. Select pods of these “sweet trees” contained up to 35% sugar, twice that of sugar cane. The pulp was rich in minerals and had 13% protein. A syrup was boiled out of the green pods, but the main event was was the fall preparation of the beans for winter food. They were toasted, soaked to make an energy drink, then ground on the metate, the meal was sun-dried and stored for winter atole or flatbread.

Dan Young. Unpublished Manuscript, 2022.