YARROW, SAGEBRUSH. 105 



fort. In cooking. ;i hole perhaps a meter or more (about •'> or 1 feet) in 

 diameter and half as deep is (lag in the ground and lined with stones. 

 A tire is then built in the hole, and alter burning tor a sufficient time is 

 cleared out. Fresh grass is next laid over the hot stones, then k-oT, 

 then more grass, anil the whole covered with earth. The mass is then 

 allowed to cook and steam the rest of the day and over night, when 

 the pit is opened and the cooked roots are ready for eating. 



The odor of the root is very disagreeable to white people, to such a 

 degree, indeed, that the use of the plant about the agency was for- 

 merly forbidden. 



The 8 iake name of the plant is kwo'-yii. 



CARDUACEAE. 



Achillea millefolium I.. 



LUl-wtiV -sum.— Yarrow, a weed common in meadows and pastures in 

 the Eastern United States, and. from the evidence of its occurrence even 

 in very remote and unsettled parts of the plains and from the state- 

 ments of the Indians, unquestionably native in our Northwest. Many 

 years ago, before the building of mill and irrigation dams, when the 

 salmon ran up Williamson and Sprague livers and the Indians were in 

 the habit of drying them, it was their custom, after a tish was split 

 open, to lay in the body cavity a yarrow stem with its leaves and flowers 

 still attached. This treatment, by holding the fish open, hastens the 

 drying process and prevents the decomposition that would be likely to 

 follow if the walls were allowed to collapse. My informant knew of 

 no special significance attached to the use of this particular plant and 

 of no special adaptability it had for this purpose, except that it did not 

 give the dried tish such a bad taste as some other plants. 



Artemisia tridentata Xntt. 



Ghiit, or boV-U'lu; — The largest, most abundant, and most widely dis- 

 tributed species of sagebrush, composing probably nine-tenths of the 

 shrubby vegetation of the plains of southeastern Oregon. In medicine 

 a decoction of the herbage is used internally to check diarrhea, exter- 

 nally as an eyewash, while the mashed herbage is used as a substitute 

 for liniment. 



In the production of tire on wood by friction, the ordinary method of 

 obtaining fire before the advent of the white man and still occasionally 

 resorted to, small dead steins of it are used as twirling sticks, this 

 being the most widely used and satisfactory wood for the purpose. 



Away from the timber, sagebrush is the almost universal fuel of the 

 region, not only among the aborigines, but among the white ranchmen. 

 The short trunks, often 10 cm. (4 inches) in diameter, but more com- 

 monly one-half to two thirds as much, have a wood of not very great 

 solidity, which, assisted by the loose stringy bark, takes fire readily 

 and produces fairly good coals. 



