USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



as a sweetmeat, or dissolved in water as a beverage, 

 or employed like molasses on tortillas and bread.^ 

 The voims: flower buds of this and some- other 

 species of Yucca possess a considerable content of 

 sugar and other nutritive principles, and by the 

 aborigines are considered delicacies ^vhen cooked. 

 Coville records a custom of the Panamint Indians 

 wlio collected the swelling buds of the grotesque 

 arborescent Yucca of the Mojave Desert kno\\m as the 

 Joshua tree {Yucca hrevifolia, Engelm.) and roasted 

 them over hot coals, eating them afterwards either 

 hot or cold. 



The Yuccas have been useful to the desert people 

 in other ways than as food, and we shall hear of 

 them again in subsequent chapters. It is not re- 

 markable, therefore, that the plant is imbued with 

 sacred siignificance and enters in many w^ays into na- 

 tive religious ceremonies. Among the Navajos, 

 Yucca haccata is called hoskawn and allusions to it 

 are of frequent occurrence in the folk lore of that 

 interesting race. Its leaves are the material out of 

 which the ceremonial masks employed in the relig- 

 ious rites of these people are made. The Govern- 

 ment has given particular distinction to this plant 



5 Bandelier, quoted by Harrington in "Ethnobotany of the Tewa 

 Indians," Bull. 55, Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 



106 



