GILMoRE] ETHNIC BOTANY 55 
me and, pointing to the plants I had collected, said, “Bon pour manger?” 
to which I replied, ‘ Ne pas bon.” He then said, ‘Bon pour medicine?” TI re- 
plied, “ Oui.” He again shook hands and rode away. ... On my return 
through the village I was stopped by a group of squaws, who invited me very 
kindly into their lodges, calling me Wakendaga’* (physician). I declined ac- 
cepting their invitation, showing them that the sun was near setting, and that 
it would be night before I could reach the boats. They then invited me to stay 
all night; this also I declined, but suffered them to examine my plants, for all 
of which I found they had names.” 
ETHNIC BOTANY 
In savage and barbarous life the occupation of first importance 
is the quest of food. In the earliest times people had to possess a 
practical working knowledge of plants with regard to their utiliza- 
tion for food; those which were edible, those by which shift could 
be made at need to avert famine, and those which on account of 
deleterious properties must be avoided at all times, came to be known 
by experience of all the people in their range. 
In the process of experiment some plants would be found which, 
though not proving useful for food, would disclose properties which 
could be used as correctives of unhealthy conditions of the body; 
some would be found to allay fevers, some to stimulate certain func- 
tions, others having the effect to stop hemorrhage, and so on. 
Certain persons in every tribe or social group, from taste and 
habit, would come to possess a fund of such knowledge, and to these 
all simpler folk, or those more occupied with other things, would 
resort. These wise ones then would know how to add the weight 
and dignity of ceremony and circumstance so that the laity should 
not fail to award due appreciation to the possessors of such knowl- 
edge; thus arose the rituals connected with the uses and the teach- 
ing of the same. Persons who desired to acquire such knowledge 
applied to those who possessed it, and if of approved character and 
prudence they, upon presentation of the customary fees or gifts, 
were duly instructed. These primitive professors of botany would 
then conduct their disciples on private excursions to the haunts of 
the plants and there impart to them the knowledge of the charac- 
teristics and habits, ecologic relations, and geographic distribution 
of the plants, together with their uses, methods, and time of gather- 
ing, preserving, and preparing for medicinal use, and the proper 
way to apply them. 
1 Bradbury must have been mistaken as to the meaning of the people or have misun- 
derstood the term used, because the Omaha word for “ physician” is wazathe. The 
word waka"dagi means ‘‘something supernatural.” This may be the word Bradbury 
heard and has given as wakendaga, or he may have misunderstood some other word. 
No such word as wakendaga has been found by me in the Omaha language. 
* Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 75. 
