90 cook: quichua names of sweet potatoes 



origin of the sweet potato or, at least, of its wide distribution 

 in prehistoric times. 



The general interest of the Quichua names lies in the fact that 

 cumara or kumara is also the name of the sweet potato in the 

 Polynesian Islands. This was first pointed* out by Seemann, 

 a botanist who had visited the Pacific Islands and the west 

 coast of South America about fifty years ago. Seemann's ob- 

 servation appeared as a brief editorial note in connection with 

 a statement by the ethnologist Crawfurd, to the effect that no 

 communication could have taken place between the American 

 continent and the Pacific Islands. 4 



The presence of the Quichua name in Ecuador is readily under- 

 stood, the native kingdom of Quito having been conquered and 

 occupied by the Incas. Some of the early Spanish historians of 

 Peru recorded Inca traditions of voyages to islands in the Pacific, 

 but such a possibilit}^ of communication between the American 

 continent and the Pacific Islands has not seemed worthy of serious 

 consideration. Nevertheless, cultivated plants of American 

 origin appear to have crossed the Pacific before the arrival of 

 Europeans. Among these trans-Pacific plants are the coconut 

 palm, the bottle-gourd, and the sweet potato. Coconuts and 

 gourds may be supposed to have floated to the Islands and es- 

 tablished themselves without human assistance, but the sweet 

 potato and its name could hardly be conveyed in this manner. 

 Nor is it to be taken as a mere coincidence that a Quichua name 

 not shared with other American languages should be associated 

 with the same crop in the Pacific Islands. 



4 Crawfurd, John. On the migrations of cultivated plants in reference to 

 ethnology. Seemann's Journal of Botany, 4: 328. 1866. 



"The Sweet Potato, or tuber-yielding Convolvulus, appears to be a native of 

 many parts of the tropical Old and New World. Some have alleged that it was 

 first made an object of cultivation by the native Americans, but when the South 

 Sea Islands, which had assuredly no communication with the American people, 

 were discovered, the sweet potato was found to be in cultivation, and known by 

 a native name throughout, the word being essentially the same, and a native one 

 varying only in pronunciation, as kumava, human, and gumala abbreviated mala." 



Seemann's comment on the above statement was as follows: "{Kumara or 

 umara, of the South-Sea Islanders, is identical with cumar, the Quichua name for 

 sweet potato in the highlands of Ecuador. — Ed.] 



