120 USES OF PLANTS BY INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 33 



CiTBULLUS ciTRULLUs (L.) Karst. AViitPi-inelon. (Pis. 29, 29 A.) 



Saka ijutapl (Dakota), Santee dialect, eaten raw {saka, raw); 

 Yankton and Teton dialect, 8hjm"shm yulajrl, eat«n uncooked 

 {■ihj)a"fifi)ii, uncooked ) . 



A^a^-rt. fhide (Oiuaha-ronca), or saJca fhata, eaten raw (sa7,-u, raw). 



Wafh^ika ratdshe (Oto). 



^^^len I first inquired of the Omaha in regard to their ancient 

 cultivated crops, they named watermelons as one of the crops grown 

 from time immemorial. Thej- siiid they had a kind of watermelon 

 which was small, round, and green, having a thin rind and red flesh, 

 with small, black, shining seeds; that it was different fi-om the 

 melons now grown fi-om seed introdiu^ed since the coming of white 

 men. I read the statement made by an early explorer coming up the 

 Missouri River that the Oto brought i)resents of watermelons to the 

 boat. I received from the Ponca, the Pawnee, and the Cheyenne 

 an account which was perfectly uniform with that I had from the 

 Omaha, even to the gestural description of the melon. Lastly, I 

 was told by a white man who was born in northern Texas and had 

 been familiar all his life with the natural characteristics of northern 

 Texas and southern Oklahoma, that he had often found and eaten 

 wild watermelons on the sand bars and banks of Red River, Pecos 

 River, and other streams of northwestern Texas. He said further 

 that his father had told him of finding them on still other streams 

 of that region. This man desciibed the wild watermelons to me 

 exactly as all the tribes before mentioned had described their culti- 

 vated melons. 



This hitherto unthoiight of probability of the presence on the 

 American continent of an indigenous species of CitruUus caused me 

 to make search tlnv)Ugh the literature and to make inquiry by corre- 

 spondence, with the results I have here appended. The more I 

 searched into the matter the more unlikely it seemed to me that even 

 so desirable a fruit as the watermelon, should it be granted to have 

 been introduced by the Spaniards at the time of their very first set- 

 tlement, could have been disseminated witli such astonishing rapidity 

 and thoroughness as to be found so common among so many tribes 

 of eastern North .\merica from the (iulf of Mexico to the Great 

 Lakes, and from the Atlantic coast to the Great Plains. Such a 

 result would be all the more astonishing, considering the barriers to 

 be passed in its passage from tribe to tribe; barriers of racial an- 

 tagonism, of diverse languages, of climatic adaptation, and the ever- 

 present barrier of conservatism, of unwillingness of any people to 

 adopt a new thing. Put if none of these barriers had intervened, 

 and if each tribe had zealoiisly propagated and distributed as rapidly 

 as possible to its neighbors, it can scarcely be believed that time 



