520 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
chopped straw to their bread, but more as our own bakers would use 
bran than as a regular article of diet. 
Barcia! makes no allusion to anything resembling hoddentin or ‘ polvos 
de bledos” in his brief account of Vaca’s journey. But Buckingham 
Smith, in his excellent translation of Vaca’s narrative, renders ‘polvos 
de paja” thus: “It was probably the seed of grass which they ate. I 
am told by a distinguished explorer that the Indians to the west col- 
lect it of different kinds and from the powder make bread, some of which 
is quite palatable.” And for “ polyos de bledos”: ‘The only explana- 
tion I can offer for these words is little satisfactory. It was the prac- 
tice of the Indians of both New Spain and New Mexico to beat the ear 
of young maize, while in the milk, to a thin paste, hang it in festoons in 
the sun, and, being thus dried, was preserved for winter use.” 
This explanation is very unsatisfactory. Would not Vaca have 
known it was corn and have said so? On the contrary, he remarks in 
that very line in Smith’s own translation: ‘There is no maize on the 
coast.” 
The appearance of all kinds of grass seeds in the food of nearly all 
the aborigines of our southwestern territory is a fact well known, but 
what is to be demonstrated is the extensive use of the “ powder” of the 
tule or cat-tail rush. Down to our day, the Apache have used not only 
the seeds of various grasses, but the bulb of the wild hyacinth and the 
bulb of the tule. The former can be eaten either raw or cooked, but 
the tule bulb is always roasted between hot stones. The taste of the 
hyacinth bulb is somewhat like that of raw chestnuts. That of the 
roasted tule bulb is sweet and not at all disagreeable. ” 
Father Jacob Baegert® enumerates among the foods of the Indians of 
southern California ‘the roots of the common reed” (i. e., of the tule). 
Father Alegre, speaking of the tribes living near the Laguna San 
Pedro,' in latitude 28° north—two hundred leagues north of the City of 
Mexico—says that they make their bread of the root, which is very 
frequent in their lakes, and which is like the plant called the ‘‘anea” 
or rush in Spain. ‘Forman el pan de una raiz muy frecuente en sus 
lagunas, semejante 4 las que laman aneas en Espana.”° 
The Indians of the Atlantic Slope made bread of the bulb of a plant 
which Capt. John Smith® says ‘“ grew like a flag in marshes.” It was 
roasted and made into loaves called “ tuckahoe.” 7 
Kalm, in his Travels in North America, * says of the tuckahoe: 
It grows in several swamps and marshes and is commonly plentiful. The hogs 
greedily dig up its roots with their noses in such places, and the Indians of Carolina 
likewise gather it in their rambles in the woods, dry it in the sun, grind, and make 
‘Ensayo Cronologico, pp. 12 et seq. 
2See also on this point Corbusier, in American Antiquarian, November, 1886. 
3Ran’s translation in Smithsonian Ann. Rep., 1863, p. 364. 
4Probably the Lake of Parras. 
5 Historia de la Compania de Jesus en Nueva-Espana, vol. 1, p. 284. 
® History of Virginia. 
7See also article by J. Howard Gore, Smithsonian Report, 1881. 
§Pinkerton, Voyages, London, 1814, vol. 13, p. 468. 
