FOOD PLANTS OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 69 



than a man's head. It is covered with spines and bears a small edible 

 fig. But its chief value does not lie in its fruit, but in its succulent 

 and thirst-relieving interior. No plant could be more admirably con- 

 trived as a reservoir, and the thick tough rind and protective spines en- 

 close an interior that is full of water. This plant is often resorted to 

 by thirsty travelers and, according to the stories told over the desert, 

 frequently saves life. 



49. A review of the food supply of these Indians forces in upon us 

 some general reflections or conclusions. First, it seems certain that the 

 diet was a much more diversified one than fell to the lot of most North 

 American Indians. Roaming from the desert, through the mountains 

 to the coast plains, they drew upon three quite dissimiliar botanical 

 zones. There was no single staple, on the production of which 

 depended the chances of sufficiency or want. Any one of several much 

 used products might be gathered in sufficient quantities to carry the 

 entire tribe through a year of subsistence. There was really an abun- 

 dant supply of wild food, far more than adequate, at nearly all times 

 of the year, for the needs of the several thousand Indian inhabi- 

 tants of former times, although hardly a score of white families will find 

 a living here after all the Indians are gone. And the secret of this 

 anomaly lies in the fact that the Indian drew his stores of food from 

 hillsides and canons, where the white man looks for nothing and can 

 produce nothing. The territory is a very large one, perhaps 4,000 

 square miles of canons and mountains, rough plains, and sandy des- 

 erts. In all of it, as we have seen, there are few spots of beauty; only 

 the valleys of pines, the wonderful canons of palms, and the green 

 potreros about the springs; while over most broods the hot, throbbing 

 silence of the desert. And yet this habitat, dreary and forbidding as 

 it appears to most, is after all a generous one. It bears some of the 

 most remarkable food plants of any continent. Nature did not pour 

 out her gifts lavishly here, but the patient toiler and wise seeker she 

 rewarded well. The main staples of diet were, indeed, furnished in 

 most lavish abundance. Let us notice a few instances. The crops of 

 legumens, that annually fall from the splendid mesquite groves of 

 the Cabeson or the New river country, could not be wholly utilized by 

 a population that numbered a hundred thousand souls. I have seen 

 the mesquite beans fallen so heavily beneath the trees in the vicinity of 

 Martinez as to carpet the sand for miles. Centals could be gathered 

 about every tree. Hundreds of horses and cattle that ranged the val- 

 ley, to say nothing of the busy women that had crowded their grana- 

 ries full, effected no visible diminution of the supply. 



