I'm sure the Indians used the hot water to leach the acorns or other seeds. I know some Indians would put a bag of acorns in a creek, or buried in mud for a few weeks to leach them. Although if they looked at the hot spring water as spiritual, it may have been offensive to prepare food in that water. Their daily life was definitely more difficult as they did not have the modern conveniences that we do. But they also had more time for things since they didn't have a job to go to 8 hours a day to afford all those conveniences. All in all, they worked less hours on average than we do in "modern" society (generally they worked about 4 hours a day).