¢ 
GILMorr] CONCLUSION 137 
the natural supply should suffice, the present restriction in range 
and movements of the Indians would prevent them from obtaining 
adequate quantities. This restriction results from the changed con- 
ditions of life and occupation, which necessitate their remaining 
at home attending to the staple agricultural crops or working at 
whatever other regular employment they have chosen. As a con- 
sequence, I have found in every tribe the incipient stage of domesti- 
cation of certain wild fruits, roots, and other plant products for 
food or medicinal use, for smoking, or perfume. I have thus been 
privileged to see the beginnings of culture of certain plants which 
in future time may yield staple crops. In this way a lively con- 
ception can be formed of the factors which in prehistoric time 
brought about the domestication in Europe and Asia of our present 
well-known cultivated plants. 
CONCLUSION 
From this partial survey of the botanical lore of the tribes of 
the region under consideration we may fairly infer, from the general 
popular knowledge of the indigenous plants, that the tribes found 
here at the European advent had been settled here already for 
many generations and that they had given close attention to the 
floral life of the region. From the number of species from the 
mountain region, on one hand, and the woodland region, on the 
other, and also from the distant southwestern desert region, which 
they imported for various uses, we know they must have traveled 
extensively. 
The several cultivated crops grown by the tribes of Nebraska are 
all of southwestern origin, probably all indigenous to Mexico. From 
this fact we can see that there was widely extended borrowing of 
culture from tribe to tribe. 
The present study suggests the human agency as the efficient factor 
in the migration of some species of wild plants, or plants growing 
without cultivation. If this be the true explanation it affords the key 
to the heretofore puzzling isolation of areas occupied by certain 
species. 
From the floral nomenclature of each tribe we find that they had 
at least the meager beginning of taxonomy. The names applied to 
plants show in many instances a faint sense of relationship of species 
to species. 
My informants generally showed keen powers of perception of 
the structure, habits, and local distribution of plants throughout a 
wide range of observation, thus manifesting the incipiency of phyto- 
geography, plant ecology, and morphology. The large number of 
. 
