GILMORE] TAXONOMIC LIST Ol PLANTS 85 
All the tribes used the berries for food, fresh in season, or dried 
for winter use. Young leaves were steeped to make a drink like tea. 
According to an Omaha informant the root was used medicinally, 
for which purpose it was scraped and boiled; the decoction was 
given to children as a remedy for bowel trouble. 
Rosa pratrncota Greene. Wild Rose. 
Orzhirzhittha (Dakota). Onzhi"zhintha-hu, rosebush. 
Wazhide (Omaha-Ponca). 
Pahatu (Pawnee), red. 
There are several species of Hosa in Nebraska, the most common 
being Rosa pratincola, the prairie rose. The fruits are sometimes 
eaten to tide over a period of food scarcity. An amusing instance 
is told in the Omaha tribe of a time when the people were without 
food and no game could be found. A man had been laboriously 
gathering for his family a supply of wild rose fruits. After he 
had a considerable quantity a man was seen returning with the 
carcass of a deer he had been able to kill. At once the rose fruits 
were cast away in prospect of the much more excellent food which 
had come to hand. 
It is said that the inner bark of the rosebush was sometimes used 
for smoking, either alone or mixed with tobacco. 
The Pawnee say there are sometimes large, brown hypertrophied 
growths on the lower part of the stems, which, when charred by 
fire and crushed to powder, were applied as a dressing to burns. 
A wash for inflammation of the eyes was made by steeping the 
fruits, according to information from the Omaha. 
THE SONG OF THE WILD ROSE 
The following is a translation into English out of the Dakota 
language, by Dr. A. McG. Beede, of an old Dakota song. The people 
of the Dakota Nation, and other tribes also, think of the various 
plant and animal species as having each their own songs. With these 
people music—song—is an expression of the soul and not a mere 
artistic exercise. 
Where the word “ Mother ” appears in the following song it refers 
to * Mother Earth,” a living, conscious, holy being in Indian thought. 
The earth was truly venerated and loved by these people, who con- 
sidered themselves not as owners or potential owners of any part of 
the land, but as being owned by the land. which gave them birth and 
which supplied their physical needs from her bounty and satisfied 
their love of the beautiful by the beauty of her face in the landscape. 
The trilled musical syllables at the close of the last two stanzas 
express the spontaneous joy which comes to a person who has “ life- 
appreciation of Holy Earth.” 
