tively recent times, possibly by Europeans or by Africans from 
the West Indies. 
Available comments are contradictory and evidence Is sparse. 
Plant piscicides may have been used infrequently by Indians and 
consequently may not have been noticed by observers or were 
not considered worthy of mention. Why, for example, did 
William Bartram, a keen observer and a competent botanist, not 
mention this custom? 
Early reports from this area, do, however, include details of 
interest in an overall picture. The procedure described is like 
that of South American utilization of plant material: the plants 
are pounded, steeped in water in a trough, and scattered on the 
surface of a pond which is then stirred with poles to spread the 
poison; the stunned fish are collected in baskets. In South 
Carolina, nuts of Aesculus pavia were ground and mixed with 
wheat flour to make a thick dough which was thrown into the 
water. It is not clear whether this was an Indian or a European 
practice. 
The picture in western North America is no clearer than in the 
southeast. Rostlund states that, as far as he knows, the earliest 
report of fish-poisoning in that area was made by Powers in 1877. 
He believes it improbable that the trait could have been intro- 
duced at that time and concludes that it ‘“seems safe to think that 
it was aboriginal on the west coast”’. 
Plants utilized in this area (north to south) are: toza root 
(Leptotaenia dissecta); a plant called by variants of the name 
‘‘Solomon”’ (Smilacina spp.); turkey mullein (Eremocarpus 
setigerus),; blue curl(Trichostema spp.); soaproot(Chlorogalum 
pomeridianum); manroot (Echinocystus sp.); buckeye (Aes- 
culus californica). 
Ample evidence is available of the use of fish poisons in 
northwestern Mexico, and it is known that California Indians 
utilized such plants as turkey mullein, soaproot, and the buc- 
keye. There is a great block of tribes between these two centers, 
however, that did not eat fish. Heizer concludes that if a histori- 
cally connected Mexican-North American practice of narcotiz- 
ing fish existed, it must either have started to the west of the 
areas where fish were not eaten, or was transferred — probably 
along the coast — before a taboo against fish-eating was in 
operation. 
84 
