IN CALIFORNIA 131 



settlers because of a practise of grubbing up wild 

 roots for food ; though why this should be less aris- 

 tocratic than digging potatoes or pulling turnips is 

 not apparent to the impartial mind. Strictly speak- 

 ing, however, it was not so much roots as the bulbs 

 of certain plants more or less related to the uni- 

 versally esteemed onion, that the Indians were delv- 

 ing for. The abundance of bulbous species of the 

 lily tribe throughout California is one of the note- 

 worthy features of plant life on the Coast, and the 

 Indian long ago discovered the nutritiousness and 

 palatability of these juicy vegetables of the wild. 

 Such bulbs are lumped by old settlers under the 

 general name of Indian potatoes, in conformity with 

 what seems almost a rule among pioneers to mis- 

 name every plant new to them; for such bulbs are 

 not in any sense related to the potato, though they 

 are cousins to the onion. Most famous of these 

 plants, perhaps, is the camas; but the best camas 

 fields occur north of California in Oregon and Idaho, 

 where so much value is placed upon this native food 

 plant that at least one Indian war has been pro- 

 voked by the encroachments of the white settlers 

 upon the Indians * preserves of it. Two or three 

 species of the beautiful tulip-like flowers known as 

 mariposa lilies or tulips (Calochortus) ; a species of 

 dogtooth violet, or erythronium, which is a beauti- 



