WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE 



flowers of both species, clustered in panicled spikes, 

 are succeeded in late summer and autumn by an 

 abundance of smdll black seeds of farinaceous con- 

 tent. It stimulates our respect for these humble, 

 weedy plants to know that the seeds of an allied 

 species, Chenopodium Quinoa, have from the dawn 

 of history been a valued food of the native Peruvians 

 and Bolivians, and have been cultivated by those 

 races. The Zuni Indians of New Mexico, according 

 to Stevenson, have a tradition that the seeds of C. 

 leptophyllum were one of their principal foodstuffs 

 in the infancy of the race before the gods sent them 

 the com plant. Afterwards, Chenopodium meal 

 mixed with com meal and salt, made into a stiff 

 batter and moulded into balls or pats and steamed, 

 became a favorite dish with epicurean Zunis.^ The 

 seeds of a prostrate, mat-like Amaranth {Amaran- 

 thus blitoides, Wats.), a weedy plant with spikelets 

 of greenish, chaffy flowers, native to the Eocky 

 Mountain region and westward, also formed an im- 

 portant item in the ancient diet of the Zunis, who 

 believed that the original seeds of it had been brought 

 up from the underworld at the time of the race's 

 emergence into the light of day. In later years, the 



8 "Ethnobotany of the Zufii Indians." 30th Ann. Report Bur. 

 Amer. Ethnology. 



53 



