258 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 34 



central body, or core, the size of a large cabbage. This is placed in 

 a hole in the ground which has been thoroughly heated, where it 

 remains two or three days covered with leafy branches or with grass 

 and earth. When it is thought to be properly cooked the mescal is 

 tested through a small hole. If ready to be eaten it is brown in color, 

 of soft consistency, pleasant smell, and sweet taste, not unlike that 

 of weak molasses. The juicy, fat leaf bases are then peeled off and 

 eaten by all. The mescal plant is easily digestible and, as it contains 

 a large quantity of sugar, must be nutritious. On occasions of great 

 scarcity of other food mescal alone has been known to sustain the 

 Apache as well as other tribes, for weeks and months at a time. 



The banana-like sweetish fruit of one of the " soap- weeds," or 

 yuccas (probably Yucca schottii), is cooked, the skin peeled off, and 

 the pulp eaten. If abundant, some of the fruit is dried and preserved 

 for future use. 



Of foods other than the cactuses one of the most' important is 

 mesquite beans. These are gathered in as large quantities as possible 

 and preserved. In time they become i:)artially spoiled owing to the 

 presence of worms, but this does not prevent them being used. In 

 preparing them for food they are pounded into a pulp, for this process 

 a cavity being made in any convenient rock; the pulp is then soaked 

 in cold water, the mass being squeezed out by the hands or through 

 a basket; the remnants are thrown away, and the sweet liquid is 

 drunk. Another way of preparing mescal is to let the whole beans 

 dry, pick out and discard the seeds, pound the pods thoroughly, and 

 mix with cold or warm water; the dish is eaten as mush, without 

 boiling. 



Regarding roots and bulbs the San Carlos people know but little. 

 They eat, however, raw or cooked, the small onion-like or radish-like 

 bulb of thec7wZ-c7w(Dichelostemma, var.Brodiaca, capitata pauciflora), 

 which is very common on the gravelly bluffs and plains of the San 

 Carlos reservation. These are eaten in the spring, by persons of all 

 ages. Having collected a supply of these bulbs, the writer, with 

 Captain Kelley, the agent of the reservation, cooked them with 

 salt and butter, finding them somewhat glutinous, but agreeable to the 

 taste and also, apparently, quite nutritious and without unpleasant 

 after effects. The plant has a blue flower which is also eaten raw. 



The leaves of a small plant known as i-tdn are used as greens. 

 They are eaten raw, or are chopped up, mixed with a little fat and 

 salt, and boiled. 



Of berries, the San Carlos Apache eat those of the sas'-chil ("soft 

 wood:" Canotia holocantha) , and also sometimes the small blackber- 

 ries that grow on a bush in the valleys known as chi-ln-tUzh; those of 

 a bu^h known as cliin-ko-ja, growing in the mountains; and fuially, 

 thougli now but rarely, the juniper berries. -The red berries of the 



