GILmorr] TAXONOMIC LIST OF PLANTS 97 
plorers tell of finding them in cultivation among the tribes of North 
America from Quebee southward through Mexico and Central Amer- 
ica into most of South America. Dr. D. V. Havard says: 
The common kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris Savi) is a South American 
plant... The finding of seeds of this species by Prof. Witmack in the pre- 
historic graves of Arizona, not only completed the demonstration of its Ameri- 
ean origin but likewise proved the antiquity of its culture in our own country.’ 
In considering the cultivated plants grown by the tribes of Ne- 
braska at the time of the advent of Europeans it is of interest to 
discover the probable region or regions of their origin and first 
domestication. We find the most advanced civilization on the con- 
tinent prior to European invasion was in Mexico and southward. 
In that direction also we find the wild plants most nearly related to 
the species aboriginally cultivated both there and in what is now 
the United States, facts suggesting the probable area inhabited by 
their wild prototypes. Doctor Coulter? reports nine species of the 
genus Phaseolus indigenous to western Texas, some or all of which, 
judging from their size as he describes them, seem to make promising 
candidates for domestication, and we can conjecture that some of 
these or others farther south were the original of the cultivated va- 
rieties found here. ; 
Before the coming of white men the Omaha cultivated many 
varieties of beans of different sizes and colors, both bush beans and 
climbing beans. The pole beans they called hitbthinge amorthir 
(Ainbthinge, bean; amo"thi", walking). Bush beans were. called 
hinbthinge mothin azhi, “bean not walking” (azhi, not). Since 
their old order of life and industries have been broken up by the 
incursion of Europeans they have lost the seed of a number of varie- 
ties which they formerly grew, but I have found four varieties still 
grown by them, and they can remember and describe the following 
fifteen: 1. Black-spotted; 2. White-spotted; 3. Yellow-spotted; 
4, Red-spotted; 5. Gray-spotted; 6. Very red; 7. Very black; 8. A 
sort of dark-red; 9. White; 10. A sort of dark-blue; 11. A sort of 
dark-yellow; 12. White with red around the hilum; 13. White with 
black around the hilum; 14. Blue, somewhat spotted; 15. “ Like the 
hair of an elk,” somewhat yellow-gray. 
Lespepeza caprrata Michx. Rabbit-foot. 
Te-hu"to"-hi nuga (Omaha-Ponca), “male buffalo bellow plant ” 
(te, buffalo; huto, bellow; nuga, male). Amorpha canescens 
was considered te-hu"to"-hi miga, female te-hu"to"-hi. 
Parus-as (Pawnee) ; parus, rabbit; as, foot. 
The Pawnee name will be recognized as an appropriate descriptive 
name. The Omaha and Ponca used the stems as they did those of 
1 Havard, Food Plants of North American Indians, p. 99. 
2Coulter, Botany of Western Texas, pp. 89-90. 
74936°—_19—33 rTH——7 
