A BIT OF USELESSNESS 117 



Indians as the air they breathe. It is their wheat 

 and corn and rice, their soup and salad and des- 

 sert, their ice and their wine, for besides being 

 their staple food, it provides casareep which pre- 

 serves their meat, and piwarie which, like excel- 

 lent wine, brightens life for them occasionally, or 

 dims it if overindulged in — which is equally true 

 of food, or companionship, or the oxygen in the 

 air we breathe. 



Besides this cultivation, Grandmother has a 

 small group of plants which are only indirectly 

 concerned with food. One is hunami, whose 

 leaves are pounded into pulp, and used for poi- 

 soning the water of jungle streams, with the sur- 

 prising result that the fish all leap out on the 

 bank and can be gathered as one picks up nuts. 

 When I first visited Grandmother's garden, she 

 had a few pitiful little cotton plants from whose 

 stunted bolls she extracted every fiber and made 

 a most excellent thread. In fact, when she made 

 some bead aprons for me, she rejected my spool 

 of cotton and chose her own, twisted between 

 thumb and finger. I sent for seed of the big 

 Sea Island cotton, and her face almost un- 

 wrinkled with delight when she saw the packets 

 with seed larger than she had ever kncrvvn. 



