90 VEGETABLE PRODUCTS USED BY NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
people. The country is, however, very extensive, and therefore much must be 
omitted, as there are numerous plants and vegetable products used by some of 
the tribes which I have never visited and of which I know nothing, except by un¬ 
certain hearsay. The following notes, therefore, principally relate to my own ob¬ 
servations and chiefly to the Indians on the Pacific seaboard. These Indians are 
not much of a phytophagous people. The tribes in the interior live by hunt¬ 
ing, and those on the banks of great rivers, such as the Fraser and Columbia, 
chiefly by fishing, so that they only resort to vegetable diet as an addition to 
their ordinary food, or as a corrective to the unvarying meals of flesh and fish, 
chiefly venison and salmon. It is only the miserable “Digger Indians”—the 
-gens de pitie of the voyageurs —who can be said to subsist to any great extent 
on vegetable food, varying it with grubs, snakes, lizards, and grasshoppers, the 
latter of which they devour as eagerly as do the Bedouins of the Eastern deserts. 
1. Food. —Nearly all of the tribes from the coast to the Rocky Mountains, use 
as food more or less of the blue lily,—the gamass or la gamass * of the voyageurs 
(Gamassia esculenta , Lindl.),—which, in the spring, lends a characteristic 
aspect to the Western Pacific prairies and open grounds. In Vancouver Island 
the gamass comes into flower about the middle or end of April, and remains in 
bloom until June, when, just as it is fading, the roots are in a condition to be 
gathered,—until that time it is watery and unpalatable ; if delayed longer, it 
fades away, and it would be impossible to find the locale of the root. The 
gathering is nearly wholly done by women and children, who use a sharp- 
pointed stick for the purpose, and it is surprising to see the aptitude with which 
the root is dug out. A botanist who has attempted the same feat with his spade 
will appreciate their skill. About this period the Indians come from their per¬ 
manent villages, and encamp under the shade of trees in little brush camps. It is 
tlie time when, away from the filth of villages, Indian life appears in its most 
picturesque aspect, and the twinkling of the gamass camp-fires, as you pass 
through the "woods at night, have a very pleasing aspect. To the gamass 
gathering come sober-minded young hunters and salmon-fishers to select a part¬ 
ner,—for the hard-working squaw is looked upon by an Indian of rightly con¬ 
stituted mind as a much more desirable acquisition than a mere gawky thing, 
gay in vermilion, brass wire, and hawk bells, or possessed of these meretricious 
graces so much prized by men civilized, and, if the truth must be told, by savage 
too. In Oregon I have seen the roots roasted until they became black ; they 
are then pounded up and preserved in cakes. In Vancouver Island, and gene¬ 
rally throughout the country, the roots are roasted (to convert the starch into 
sugar, though, of course, the Indian knows nothing of the rationale of the pro¬ 
cess) and preserved in bags for winter use. They are sweet to the taste, and 
appear to be a nourishing and far from unpalatable article of food. The roots 
of the Sagittaria sagittifolia, L., w T ere at one time very extensively eaten by 
the Indians under the name of wappattoo , and, on the Columbia river, there is 
an island called Wappatoo Island, from the abundance of this plant. Since the 
introduction of the potato, the use of the roots of Sagittaria has much declined, 
and the name is now transferred to the potato. In the vicinity of nearly every 
village are small patches of potatoes; but the ground is merely scratched up, 
and the cultivation far from being properly attended to. Their innate laziness 
and hatred of any work out of the ordinary routine of their life—not consecrated 
by tradition and lav r s made and provided for—will not allow of their either pro¬ 
perly attending to these patches or increasing their cultivation and their own 
material comforts thereby, to the boundless extent w r hich they might, the land 
costing nothing ; however, since the introduction of this useful tuber, the Indians 
* A good account of this plant will he found in the catalogue of Geyer's plants, in Hooker’s 
‘London Journal of Botany,’ vol. v. 
