USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



bark readily separates and leaves exposed a soft, 

 long, brownish fiber which is both strong and last- 

 ing. At one time some of the aborigines wove this 

 into articles of clothing, but the commoner use of it 

 was in making fish- and carrying-nets, string and 

 ropes. Peter Kalm speaks of the Swedes in the 

 Delaware Kiver colonies a century and a half ago 

 preferring such ropes to those of common hemp, and 

 bought them from their Indian neighbors at the 

 astonishing rate of "fourteen yards for a piece of 

 bread I" 



The Indians of the lower Colorado Eiver obtained 

 a fiber suitable for fishing lines and nets from a 

 leguminous plant, Sesbania macrocarpa, Muhl., a tall 

 annual, sometimes as much as twelve feet high, with 

 pinnate leaves, yellowish, pea-like flowers purple- 

 spotted, and very narrow, drooping seed-pods a foot 

 long. It is commonly known as Wild Hemp, and 

 grows in moist soil from South Carolina and Florida 

 westward and along the Mexican border. On the 

 Pacific Coast another plant of the Pea family that 

 has entered into the weaving art of the Indians, is 

 Psoralea macrostachya, DC., a cousin of the famous 

 Prairie-potato mentioned in an earlier chapter. It 

 is a stout, heavy-scented perennial, three to twelve 

 feet high, with leaves consisting of three leaflets, and 



214 



