128 .NOTES AND 



They also eat the dried seeds of the orontium aquatieum, called by them taw- 

 kee ; they were boiled in water, and eat like peas, or made into bread. This 

 plant was plentiful in moist and low grounds. Whortleberries, or huckleberries, 

 were dried by them and made into a dainty dish, by being mixed with fresh 

 aize flour, and baked. They also gathered and dried hickory and black wal- 

 nuts ; took out the kernels and pounded them as fine as flour : mixed this sub- 

 stance with water, which took a milky colour, and was as sweet as milk. 



The tuckahoe (or tawkee, as Kalm supposes) was probably a native of this 

 state. The lycoperdon tuber of Linnaeus, called truffles, grows here and in New- 

 Jersey, and we have a place called Tuckahoe. These tuberous productions arc 

 not the same. The Indians made delicious bread from their farinaceous matter. 



According to Lewis and Clarke, the Indians of Columbia river eat the roots 

 of a species of thistle, fern, rush, liquorice, and a small cylindric root, resem- 

 bling in flavour and consistency the sweet potato. 



NOTE 33, 



This production has been used by the Indians from time immemorial. In ti 

 curious book, entitled A Description of the English Province of Carolana, by the 

 Spaniards called Florida, and by the French La Louisiane, etc. by Daniel Coxe, 

 esq. printed, London, 1741, it is thus described : " beside?, this country natur 

 ally affords another sort of excellent corn, which is the most like oats of any 

 european grain, but longer and larger ; and I have been assured by many very 

 credible persons, who, out of curiosity, had divers ways prepared if., that it 

 far exceeds our best oatmeal. ThiB is not sown and cultivated by the indians, 

 but grows spontaneously in marshy places, in and by the sides of river?, like 

 reeds oY ru^he?. The Indians, when it is ripe, take handfuils, shake 

 tliern into their canofs ; what escapes them falling into the" water, without any 

 further trouble produce? the next year's crop." Hcarne saw it as far north ag 

 Churchill river, ne^r the 00th degree of north latitude. Ellis, in his account of 

 A Voyage to Discover a North We?t passage, mentions, that there are great 

 quantities of wild rice by the sHes of the lakes and rivers which run into Hud 

 son's Bay, between the 50th and 55th degrees of north latitude. On the 2f.; 

 September, Pike stopped at a Sioux village, between Pepin and the falls of st. 

 Anthony, and in about 44 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, and found it evacu- 

 ated, all the Indians having gone out to gather fols avoin ; and he says, that 

 trader , rhiefly der^nd for their support ujx>n wild ont?, of which 



