FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 55 



and repellant plant forms, could yield nothing possible for food, but 

 in reality the severe competition and struggle with aridity have operated 

 to invest desert plants with remarkable nutritive elements. The very 

 hoarding of strength and moisture that goes on in many plants is a 

 promise of hidden nutrition. And, while many plants protect their 

 growth against destruction by animals through the secretion of poison 

 ous or noxious elements, the cunning of the savage woman has taught 

 her how to remove these. Beside every Coahuilla home there stands 

 ever ready the wide pd-cha-ka-vel, or leaching basket. The results 

 prove far more than the expectation would warrant. 



I cannot pretend to have exhausted the food supply of these 

 Indians, but I have discovered not less than sixty distinct products for 

 nutrition, and at least twenty-eight more utilized for narcotics, stimu 

 lants, or medicines, all derived from desert or semi-desert localities, in 

 use among these Indians. To my regret I cannot in all cases announce 

 the botanical name of the plant from which these are derived. A 

 number of these plants, which were seen by me but once, were pointed 

 out and the Indian name and uses described, on a trip through the 

 desert to the Cabeson valley, with a single Indian, Celestin Torte, 

 of Torres mountain, in the summer of 1897. Some, by their very 

 nature, could not be carried along in the saddle, as we were ; a few 

 others, gathered and preserved, could not be identified, owing to 

 damaged condition and absence of flower or fruit. This indetermin- 

 ateness particularly applies to the numerous species of the cactus fam 

 ily, which grow forest- like over many of the rocky canon sides of the 

 descent to the desert. 



The staples of the Coahuillas are fortunately all determined, some 

 of them having a very wide use among the Indian tribes of the South 

 west. It is with a description of some of these staples that we will begin. 



41. On the desert the main reliance of the Coahuilla Indians is the 

 algaroba or mesquite. This remarkable tree is well known to anyone 

 who has traversed the sandy Southwest. Its range is wide, from the 

 desert slopes of the California mountains, eastward in southern lati 

 tudes to Texas. Of the Colorado basin it is the characteristic tree. It 

 grows to a height of from thirty to forty feet. Its wood is close-grained 

 and hard] its leaves small but abundant, and its branches well armored 

 with spines. On the Colorado river and its affluents and overflow 

 streams, the New, and Hardy rivers, it grows abundantly along every 

 slough and about each lagoon. Looking down upon the Colorado 

 desert from the heights below Jacumba pass, the desert appears banded 



