204 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



stances. Occasionally a chaiwe, like all baskets, is used for storage; 

 chaff-free uncooked wheat and toasted wheat were seen so stored. 



Baskets with handles (kiilko) (pi. 46, 4) are used for carrying and 

 for storage; trays (llepii) (pis. 44, 2; 46, 5), for winnowing wheat, 

 dried beans, and peas, or "anything that needs to be winnowed." 



Cooper writes regarding noncultivated food plants which were part 

 of the Araucanian diet : "The number of distinct species of wild 

 plants exploited, a good many of them intensively, as food sources 

 was very large, totaling probably a good 75 to 100." One of his 

 sources, an Araucanian, listed nearly 50 plants. Among plants listed 

 by Cooper are roots and tubers, rhizomes of a fern, fruits and berries, 

 apples (post-Columbian), nuts, seeds, leaves and greens, mushrooms 

 and algae (1946, p. 702). 



In all the areas I visited, non-Araucanian herbalists knew that wild 

 plants formed a substantial part of the Araucanian diet today. Chil- 

 dren like to eat fresh berries and uncooked fruits and roots of certain 

 plants, and many were seen at school with teeth blackened from the 

 blue-black fruit of the maqui and the berries of michai and chakaiwa. 

 They also relish the fresh fruit of mitahue, chaura, and chupon. A 

 child will reach into the spiney bush of chupon, get hold of a blade near 

 its roots and pull it out, draw the root end between the teeth to sever 

 the fruit, suck the juice, and spit out the seeds. "Their juice is sweet; 

 just try some." Children are also fond of eating the peeled, uncooked 

 root of the rhubarblike nalca, and the stem, just above the root, of a 

 large fern called helecho grande. 



The core and the stem of the helecho grande is dried, ground fine, 

 and boiled in water (or, recently, in milk), and eaten as a thick soup. 

 In Panguipulli, wild plants cooked in meat broth or in stews are green 

 leaves of yuyo and dried powdered flowers of circuelillu. Tubers of 

 the wild potato (papa), are sometimes collected, but those of lawu, 

 and of koifiifi (not identified) are no longer used. The wild potato 

 is often crossed with cultivated ones by putting pieces or small whole 

 ones of both kinds into each hill. "In another season this mixture 

 produces a large potato, sweeter than the ordinary cultivated one. If 

 the wild potato is planted alone, it does not produce well," said the 

 informant. 



Tomillo, a wild plant, is used as a condiment. So are two cultivated 

 plants borrowed from Chileans — peppermint (yerba buena) and 

 oregano. The most common condiment is a mixture of salt and chili. 

 Today salt is bought in Chilean stores, but Conaripe informants re- 

 membered when it was obtained from Araucanians who lived where it 

 was found in caves. Families along the Pacific formerly cooked in 



