420 ABORIGINAL BOTANY. 
persons. It is surprising what a number of roots, leaves, berries, and nuts, 
the squaw will discover. She will go out in the spring with nothing but a 
fire-hardened stick, and in an hour she will pick a breakfast of green stuff, 
into which there may enter fifteen or twenty ingredients. Her eye will be 
arrested by a minute plant that will yield her only a bulbous root as large 
as a large pea, but which the American would have passed unnoticed. 
The women are generally best acquainted with the edible matters, while 
the men are the authority as to the medicines. 
There are seventy-three vegetable substances mentioned in this chapter. 
I am indebted to the kindness of Prof. H. N. Bolander, who identified for 
me many plants that I was unable to determine. There are a few speci- 
mens which are so scarce nowadays, owing to the ravages of stock, or so 
difficult to find in flower, that it was impossible to give their scientific names. 
I will take this occasion to say that there are many substances popu- 
larly called “ Indian medicines” which are humbugs, and which have been 
fathered upon the Indians by patent-medicine men. Whatever is set down 
in this chapter has been learned from the aborigines themselves. 
In regard to medicinal herbs and plants, their usages are peculiar and 
sometimes amusing. As the practice of medicine among them is a source 
of great profit and prestige, it is sought 1o be invested with mystery. The 
shamans are always crafty men, keen observers, reticent. An old doctor 
always clothes his art with a great deal of superstition, secrecy, and pomp- 
ous solemnity. In answer to impertinent young questioners, he says his 
simples do not grow anywhere in that neighborhrod; he is obliged to pur- 
chase them from tribes living at a great distance. I knew an old doctor 
and his wife, both as full of guile and subtlety as an egg is of meat, who 
always arose at the dead of night, crept steathily out of camp and gathered 
their potent herbs, roots, ete., then returned before any one was stirring 
and concealed them. 
The Indians referred to in this chapter are the Nishinam, of Bear 
River, and the flora is that of the extreme lower foot-hills of Placer County. 
Their general name for medicine is wen'-neh, which denotes “ good”, but 
they frequently use the word ‘medicine ”, even among themselves. 
To begin with the oaks, the species which produces their favorite acorns 
