70 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
IDENTITY OF THE BEAN MOUSE OF LEWIS AND CLARK 
By Vernon Bailey 
For over a century the ground beans or wild peanuts taken by the 
Indians of the upper Missouri Valley from the caches of some little 
animal have been known and made use of by travellers, explorers, and 
naturalists, but the animal which laid up these valuable food stores 
has only recently been identified. It proves to be an unnamed 
meadow mouse of the Microtus pennsylvanicus group. 
In 1804 Lewis and Clark obtained from the “Ricaras’^ (Arikara 
Indians) a large rich bean which they take from the mice of the prairie 
which discover and collect it.’’^ Later they reported artichokes taken 
from the stores of mice by their Indian woman, and while Coues in a 
footnote credits these stores to pocket gophers, they were more probably 
the collections of the mice^ which commonly store the beans, artichokes, 
and other roots together in underground cavities. Other explorers 
give passing mention to the mouse stores used by the Indians as food, 
and writing in 1845 Father De Smet says: ‘‘The earth pea and bean are 
also delicious and nourishing roots found commonly in low and alluvial 
lands. The above named roots form a considerable portion of the 
sustenance of these Indians during winter. They seek them in places 
where mice and other little animals, in particular the ground squirrel, 
have piled them in heaps. 
The extent to which these beans have been used by the Indians as 
food is evidently greater than has been generally supposed. Some of 
the Dakotas at Cannon Ball, North Dakota, have told me of gathering 
several bushels each autumn from the mouse stores, and both Indians 
and whites greatly prize them as a rich and delicious food. They are 
large, fleshy beans produced on underground shoots of a trifoliate bean 
vine, Falcata comosa. 
The artichokes stored with the beans are the tubers of a wild sun- 
flower {Helianthus tuherosa) also growing abundantly on the rich bottom- 
lands of the river valleys. They too are a valuable food and much 
used by the Indians, and are gathered from the ground where they grow 
as well as from the mouse collections. 
1 Lewis and Clark Journals, Coues, Vol. I, p. 161, 1893. 
2 Lewis and Clark Journals, Coues, Vol. I, p. 263, 1893. 
3 Life and Travels of De Smet, Vol. II, p. 655, 1905. See also Dr. Melvin R. 
Gilmore, Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region. Ann, Rept. 
Bur. Amer. Ethnology for 1911 and 1912, p, 95, 1919. 
