52 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 



yu-mu-wal, or basket hat, and having slung her net and basket over 

 her shoulder is ready to set out on her quest for food. She has also 

 two other implements, a chi-pat-mal, or flat gathering basket, and her 

 seed fan, yi-kow-a-pish. In the Southwest and among many Shoshone 

 Indians, Utes, and Panamints, this seed fan takes the place of the 

 pointed, fire-hardened digging stick of the North. It is shaped like 

 a light tennis racket and is made of willow wands and rawhide. In 

 gathering seeds from the low grass or bushes, the woman holds the 

 chi-pat-mal nearly flat against the ground and beats the seeds from the 

 grass stems with the seed fan. 



36. Many of the foods furnished by this country, including several 

 nuts and pits, are bitter and astringent. To remove these principles, 

 the meal ground from these products is leached with water. Some 

 times a sandy spot on the creek bottom suffices, but more often a 

 large, shallow basket, perhaps three feet in diameter, is woven of 

 osiers. This basket is set on a low pole platform and filled with care 

 fully selected sand. The basket is called pd-cha-ka-vel and the sand 

 nd-chish. A depression is smoothed in the sand and the meal piled 

 thereon and water poured slowly through. Contrary to what might 

 be expected, the meal mingles but little with the sand and is daintily 

 scooped out when the leaching is accomplished. A hard, smoothly 

 brushed floor is always to be seen near a home, where various fruits, 

 nuts, and berries are spread out to dry. 



37. Of receptacles for storing food, the most striking is the basket 

 granary. These are made of osiers. The withes with the leaves left 

 on are first twisted loosely into a thick rope as big as a man s arm and 

 from this the basket is coiled. The shape is circular, rounding toward 

 the top with a tolerably flat bottom. There is a short, narrow neck. 

 The size is about thirty inches for height and a somewhat greater 

 diameter. The neck and mouth are narrow ten inches or so across. 

 It will hold many bushels of grain or seeds. Over the mouth is laid 

 a flat sandstone slab, or a wicker cover weighted with a stone or two. 

 In the Cabeson these granaries are made almost exclusively out of the 

 hdng-al, the species of wormwood so abundant there (Artemisia Ludo- 

 vitiana, Nutt.), and having been filled with mesquite beans they are 

 covered over and sealed with an armful of the shoots and a daub of 

 mud. These granaries are perched either on platforms of poles, or, in 

 the mountains, on the flat tops of high boulders, out of the reach of 

 field mouse or kangaroo rat. 



This great basket, or, as the Coahuillas call it, mal-a-not, is the 



