USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



A good Indian black has been got from the mal- 

 odorous Eocky Mountain Bee-plant or Pink Spider- 

 flower {Cleome serrulata, Pursh.), familiar to every 

 traveler on our western plains, and conspicuous for 

 its showy racemes of pink, long-stamened flowers, 

 mingled with long-stalked, slender, outstretched seed- 

 pods. Certain of the Pueblo Indians of New 

 Mexico (where the plant is knoA^m among the 

 Spanish-speaking population as guaco) have habitu- 

 ally relied upon it for the black decoration of their 

 pottery. The plants are collected in summer, boiled 

 down thoroughly, and the thick, black, residual fluid 

 then allowed to dry and harden in cakes. Pieces 

 of this are soaked in hot water, when needed for 

 paint.'' The desert Indians of Southern California 

 used to obtain a yellowish-brown dye for coloring 

 deerskins and other material from a shrubby plant 

 of the Pea tribe, Dalea Emoryi, Gray, bearing small, 

 terminal clusters of tiny pea-like flowers, staining 

 the fingers when pinched and exhaling an odd but 

 pleasant fragrance. The branchlets were steeped in 

 water to release the color. Another desert dye, but 

 black, may be had by soaking the stems of Sueda 

 suffrutescens, Wats., a somewhat woody plant of the 

 Salt-bush family, with small, dark green, fleshy 



T Harrington, "Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians." 



228 



