crockett said:
On the wood ash lye- I thought it was poisonous and was used to wrinkle and remove the hull from corn but then you had to wash the corn to remove the lye.
That's right. Wash it a lot, and then cook it until it is soft, and you have hominy. Here is a nice step-by step description of the method used by the Hidatsa Indians along the Missouri river in mid-19th century. From Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden...
"Mạdạpo'zi Pă'kici, or Lye-Made Hominy. There was another way in which we prepared hard and soft yellow and hard and soft white; this was to make it into hominy with lye.
I collected about a quart of ashes; only two kinds were used, cottonwood or elm wood ashes. When I was cooking with such wood and thought of making hominy, I was careful to collect the ashes, raking away the other kinds first.
I put on an iron kettle nearly full of water, and brought it to a boil. Into the boiling water I put the ashes, stirring them about with a stick. Then I set the pot off to steep for a short time.
When the ashes had settled I poured the lye off into a vessel and cleaned the pot thoroughly.
In earlier times the ashes were boiled in an earthen pot as indeed I have often seen it done when I was a girl. I was not quite twenty when we bought an iron pot for cooking. Before that we used only earthen pots for cooking in our family.
Having cleaned the pot I poured the lye back into it, put the pot on the fire, and added shelled, ripe, dried corn. This I boiled until the hulls came off the grain and the corn kernels appeared white.
I added a little water, and took the pot off the fire; I drained off the lye.
I poured water into the pot and washed the corn, rubbing the kernels between my palms; I drained off the water.
I poured in water and washed the corn a second time, in the same way, I drained off the water.
Again I put water in the pot and boiled the corn in it. As the corn was already soft, this boiling did not take long. I now added fats, and beans, and sometimes dried squash, all at the same time; and the pot I replaced on the fire. When the beans and squash were cooked, the mess was ready to eat.
Corn so prepared we call mạdạpo'zi pă'kici, or boiled-whole-corn rubbed. It is so called because the hulls of the kernels were rubbed off between the palms at the time the corn was washed in water after the lye was poured off."
And the Shawnee method, from _Indian Captivity: A true narrative of the capture of Rev. O. M. Spencer by the Indians, in the neighborhood of Cincinnati_ , in 1792...
"On a very cold day, about the middle of January, she had risen before day, and intending to make some hommony, had boiled the corn for some time with the ashes to remove its hulls. It was my duty to cleanse it from the ashes, and as it had been long enough in them, I was ordered to get up and perform that duty."
Spence
