A BIT OF USELESSNESS 117 
Indians as the air they breathe. It is their wheat 
and corn and rice, their soup and salad and des- 
sert, their ice and their wine, for besides being 
their staple food, it provides casareep which pre- 
Serves their meat, and piwarie which, like excel- 
len’ wine, brightens life for them occasionally, or 
dims it if overindulged in—which is equally true 
of food, or companionship, or the oxygen in the 
air we breathe. 
Besides this cultivation, Grandmother has a 
small group of plants which are only indirectly 
concerned with food. One is kunami, whose 
leaves are pounded into pulp, and used for poi- 
soning the water of jungle streams, with the sur- 
prising result that the fish all leap out on the 
bank and can be gathered as one picks up nuts. 
When I first visited Grandmother’s garden, she 
had a few pitiful little cotton plants from whose 
stunted bolls she extracted every fiber and made 
a most excellent thread. In fact, when she made 
some bead aprons for me, she rejected my spool 
of cotton and chose her own, twisted betwden 
thumb and finger. I sent for seed of the big 
Sea Island cotton, and her face almost un- 
wrinkled with delight when she saw the packets 
with seed larger than she had ever known. 
