NOTES OX THE PLANTS USED BY THE KLAMATH 



INDIANS OF OREGON. 



Bv Frederick V. Coviixk. 



While engaged in a botanical survey of the plains of southeastern 

 Oregon in the summer of 1800 the writer spent three days, August 21 

 to 23, at Fort Klamath and the Klamath Indian Agency, where he was 

 enabled to secure information as to the principal plants used by the 

 Klamath Indians. The notes made at the time are here brought 

 together for publication, with a view to their use by others in securing 

 fuller and more detailed data about the aboriginal uses of plants by 

 this tribe. The writer hopes, when the necessary material has been 

 collected, to prepare a comprehensive paper on the subject. 



Most of the information here recorded was obtained from Joe Kirk, 

 an educated Klamath Indian, who for several years has been the offi- 

 cial interpreter at the agency, and from White Cindy, a Klamath 

 medicine woman who lived on a small ranch on the lake shore a few 

 miles south of the agency. Capt. (). 0. Apple gate, of Klamath Falls; 

 Mr. Charles E. Worden, the allotting agent for the Klamath Indians, 

 and Jesse Kirk, the brother of Joe Kirk, gave additional information. 



The diacritic marks used to indicate the pronunciation of the Indian 

 names are those employed in the Century Dictionary. 



LICHENES. 

 Alectoria fremontii Tuckenn. 



A lichen consisting of slender black threads hanging in masses often 

 a foot in length from the branches of trees in the pine forests, particu- 

 larly abundant on the black or lodge-pole pine, Pinns murrayana. The 

 plant was sometimes used in former years as a famine food. To the 

 present white inhabitants of the region it is commonly known as 



u black moss." 



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