PLANTS USED BY THE INDIANS OF MENDOCINO 
COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. 
INTRODUCTION. 
While in California during the summers of L897 and 1898, and inci- 
dentally in the summer and winter of 1892, the writer had opportunity 
to make some inquiry into the native uses of plants in the Round 
Valley Indian Reservation, and in July, 1897, similar inquiries were 
made at Ukiah. Both of these places are in Mendocino County, which 
stretches as a band 60 miles broad for 84 miles along the coast, about 
midway between San Francisco and the northern border of the State. 
The floras of these two regions, although they are only 42 miles 
apart, differ considerably, and both vary a little from that of the red- 
wood belt of the immediate coast line, about 40 miles distant. This 
third belt was not visited by the writer; but inasmuch as there are 
few, if any, Indian tribes in the county which are not represented in 
the reservations or at Ukiah, and since, moreover, many of these visit 
the coast occasionally, this report may be taken to be fairly represent- 
ative for the county. 
At as late a date as 1849, Round Valley, which is near the northern 
end of the county and about 200 miles north of San Francisco, was 
unknown to white men, being then inhabited by a peculiar tribe of 
very uncommunicative and warlike people, the Yuki, and it was not 
until 1856 that white people began to settle there. The Yokia and 
Pomo Indians, who lived in the immediate vicinity of the now flourish- 
ing town of Ukiah, were well known at a much earlier date; but it 
has been since 1880 only that the California Northwestern Railway 
was extended to the town, which is still the terminus of the road. 
Connection with Round Valley, which by the compass is 42 miles 
north of Ukiah, is made by stage over a very circuitous mountain 
route by way of Laytonville, or by private conveyance over a poorer 
but more direct road by way of Eden Valley. 
Since the Round Valley Indians, the Yuki, have become known to 
civilization only within the last half century it was thought that a 
study of their uses of plants would yield better results than would be 
obtained by a study of the more southern Pomo and Yokia tribes. 
In 1897, therefore, inquiries were made during July and August in 
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