54 USES OF PLANTS BY INDIANS [BTH, ANN. 33 
ple of the country do not demand articles of food other than those 
to which our European ancestors were accustomed those articles will 
be subject to demand in excess of production, with consequent en- 
hancement of cost, while at the same time we have large land areas 
practically unproductive because the plants they are best fitted to 
produce are not utilized. The adjustment of American consumption 
to American conditions of production will bring about greater im- 
provement in conditions of life than any other material agency. 
The people of any country must finally subsist on those articles of 
food which their own soil is best fitted to produce. New articles of 
diet must come into use, and all the resources of our own country 
must be adequately developed. 
Dr. J. W. Harshberger has well stated the practical uses and the 
correlations of ethnobotanic study: 
Phytogeography, or plant geography in its widest sense, is concerned not 
only with the distribution of wild plants, but also with the laws governing the 
distribution of cultivated plants. In order to determine the origin of the lat- 
ter—that is, the original center from which the cultivation of such plants has 
spread—it is necessary to examine the historic, archeologic, philologic, eth- 
nologic, and botanic evidence of the past use of such plants by the aboriginal 
tribes of America. This investigation affords interesting data which can be 
applied practically in enlarging the list of plants adaptable to the uses of civi- 
lized man. ... Ethnobotany is useful as suggesting new lines of modern 
manufacture, for example, new methods of weaving goods, as illustrated by 
the practical application of the careful studies of pueblo fabrics by Frank H. 
Cushing. It is of importance, therefore, to seek out these primitive races and 
ascertain the plants which they have found available in their economic life, 
in order that perchance the valuable properties they have utilized in their 
wild life may fill some vacant niche in our own, may prove of value in time 
of need or when the population of America becomes so dense as to require 
the utilization of all of our natural resources.” 
NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES 
That we have had in the past exceptional opportunities for ob- 
taining aboriginal plant lore, which we have failed to recognize, 
disdained to accept, or neglected to improve, is well shown by an 
incident narrated in his journal by the great botanical explorer, 
Bradbury, in the beginning of the nineteenth century. How much 
information might then have been obtained which is no longer avail- 
able! In 1809 Bradbury accompanied a trading expedition up the 
Missouri River as far as the villages of the Arikara. 
I proceeded along the bluffs [in the vicinity of the Omaha village which was 
at that time near the place where Homer, Dakota County, Nebr., now is] and 
was very successful in my researches, but had not been long employed when 
T saw an old Indian galloping toward me. He came up and shook hands with 
1 Harshberger, Phytogeographic Influences in the Arts and Industries of American 
Aborigines, p. 26. 
