120 USES OF PLANTS BY INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 33 
Crrrunius crrruttus (L.) Karst. Watermelon. (Pls. 29, 29A-) 
Saka yutapi (Dakota), Santee dialect, eaten raw (saka, raw) ; 
Yankton and Teton dialect, shpa"shni yulapi, eaten uncooked 
(shpa'shni, uncooked). 
Saka thide (Omaha-Ponea), or saka thata, eaten raw (saka, raw). 
Wathaka ratdshe (Oto). 
When I first inquired of the Omaha in regard to their ancient 
cultivated crops, they named watermelons as one of the crops grown 
from time immemorial. They said they had a kind of watermelon 
which was small, round, and green, having a thin rind and red flesh, 
with small, black, shining seeds; that it was different from the 
melons now grown from seed introduced since the coming of white 
men. I read the statement made by an early explorer coming up the 
Missouri River that the Oto brought presents of watermelons to the 
boat. I received from the Ponca, the Pawnee, and the Cheyenne 
an account which was perfectly uniform with that I had from the 
Omaha, even to the gestural description of the melon. Lastly, I 
was told by a white man who was born in northern Texas and had 
been familiar all his life with the natural characteristics of northern 
Texas and southern Oklahoma, that he had often found and eaten 
wild watermelons on the sand bars and banks of Red River, Pecos 
River, and other streams of northwestern Texas. He said further 
that his father had told him of finding them on still other streams 
of that region. This man described the wild watermelons to me 
exactly as all the tribes before mentioned had described their culti- 
vated melons. 
This hitherto unthought of probability of the presence on the 
American continent of an indigenous species of Citru/lus caused me 
to make search through the literature and to make inquiry by corre- 
spondence, with the results I have here appended. The more I 
searched into the matter the more unlikely it seemed to me that even 
so desirable a fruit as the watermelon, should it be granted to have 
been introduced by the Spaniards at the time of their very first set- 
tlement, could have been disseminated with such astonishing rapidity 
and thoroughness as to be found so common among so many tribes 
of eastern North America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great 
Lakes, and from the Atlantic coast to the Great Plains. Such a 
result would be all the more astonishing, considering the barriers to 
be passed in its passage from tribe to tribe; barriers of racial an- 
tagonism, of diverse languages, of climatic adaptation, and the ever- 
present barrier of conservatism, of unwillingness of any people to 
adopt a new thing. But if none of these barriers had intervened, 
and if each tribe had zealously propagated and distributed as rapidly 
as possible to its neighbors, it can scarcely be believed that time 
